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Hip Hop 50 Town Hall Discussion · Hip-Hop Now Podcast

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  Coming up on this week's episode of hip Hop Now podcast, it is a
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  hip hop fifty town hall. Yep, let's do it. Welcome to jip
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  Hop Now podcasts. If you from the future, you know what to do.
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  Show as out of my don't disrespect the leg leg hip hop to say
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  to stay. Let's get right into the business. What up, y'all.
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  I'm glad y'are tuned in. I'm glad the audio listeners ahead with me.
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  But I just had to intro a little something if you don't know. This
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  past week, I produced a town hall right on the hip Hop Now YouTube
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  channel, but it also streamed on the Facebook page Facebook dot com slash hip
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  Hop Right Now, also on my Twitter at Vegas World I n C.
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  I was hosted by Lisa Thirden, featured Rock Digga, Tracy Lee, Tracy
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  Baker Simmons, and a couple of guests. A couple of guests it didn't
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  show up, so I want you to check it out, and included proud
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  participation, salute to the people who showed up, ask questions, had comments,
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  just enjoyed the live stream and now you'll get to listen to it.
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  But if you want to check it out, it is on my YouTube channel,
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  or you have to go to is YouTube dot com. Right type in
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  the search hip Hop Now Podcasts, you'll see it. You'll see the logo
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  hit subscribe, hit like, and then watch this town hall. That is
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  really dope because it centers around not only the history of hip hop and fifty
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  years of hip hop, but also some reflections from different periods and things like
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  ladies in hip hop right, and politics in the business of hip hop.
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  It's really really informative. So next week we'll be back with our usual show,
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  but this week check this out. Hello everybody, we are live finally
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  at the Hip Hop fiftieth town Hall. We're celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of hip
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  hop. I debate that because you know, the sugar Hill Gang and all
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  that stuff or whatever, but anyway, that's the official, you know time,
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  they're saying fifty years ago. So you've noticed that a lot of people
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  are writing about it. Bloggers are blogging about it. There's a bunch of
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  you know, the documentaries in a live events just jumping off about in and
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  around the celebration of hip hop's fiftieth anniversary. And so officially, I think
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  it was technically August, but I think we're celebrating the whole year. So
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  I want to introduce myself. For those of you who don't know, my
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  name is Lisa Dirty and I'm gonna be your host for today. But it's
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  gonna be a conversation more than it is, like you know, Q and
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  a Q and a Q and A. But I wanted to make sure,
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  along with my other producer, Steven Smith, who's behind the walls here running
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  everything, to put together a panel of guests who are not just pioneers in
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  the game, movers and shakers in the game, but they're students of the
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  game, and also people who are kind of new to hip hop but who
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  have made an impact in the game as well. So we're gonna kind of
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  have an intergenerational conversation. I see folks popping in, Hey Eddie, Hey
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  you guys. I'm glad you can join it. So let me just do
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  a quick introduction. But I want them to tell more about themselves, So
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  I've got to bring up my girl, Rod Digga. I mean, if
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  you don't know who that is, I'm sorry for you. She's she's the
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  real real Rod Digga is a rapper. I don't know other ventures she does,
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  but I just know her as a rapper. She kills it, she
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  can spit grime. And recently, because of the celebration, she was featured
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  one of the featured hip hop artists in the Ladies First documentary that was on
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  I think Hulu. So she's thanks Netflix. Okay, I'm used to my
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  whost Netflix, but the streaming sights, thank you for correcting me. So
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  she's and she did a great job. You will look in amazing as well.
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  You're welcome. And then Tracy Beaker Simmons, who have known for a
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  thousand years. Oh we'll fin years, you know, five hundred years.
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  Tracy Becker Simmons is the undisputed pioneer of reality show. She is the creator
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  of Being Bobby Brown, remember that show, Whoo Whoo. And she's done
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  many mini mini shows I won't list that she can kind of tell more about
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  herself. But most recently, because of the celebration of the fiftieth years of
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  hip hop, she has has a show on A and E right now call
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  hip Hop Treasures Ceasing All the Great So check that out. And she has
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  more things she'll talk about in her deeper conversation. And Terence l. Bankston,
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  who is as Kay the General, a k A Scrilla, get scrilla
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  and my actual cousin because you know, black folks called everybody they cook.
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  But this is my actual cousin, Terence Bankston. He's got a stage name
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  as Ka the General. He's a rapper. He was known for the hip
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  Hop Conference. He didn't the York every year, so he'll talk more about
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  what he's been doing as well. And new to me it is Tracy Lee.
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  Honey, he's a rapper, slash esquire. I mean he's a lawyer.
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  He's a he's a he's a lawyer, y'all. He's a lawyer.
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  Hey, judge Hay, so he's a lawyer as well. So listen,
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  I love how people have careers and they pivot to other careers because hip hop
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  is a culture. So I'm loving the fact that you have your education and
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  you also still decided I can merge those two things together and I think they
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  make sense. So that's the panel, and we're waiting for Wonder Mike.
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  So when he wants to pop in and get ready to come pop in,
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  he'll come in. Wonder Mike is going to do it when he's ready and
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  he's available. He needs from the cert games that we'll talk more about him.
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  In the meantime, Rod Digga, tell me more about what's going on,
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  and we'll go across the board, Rod Digga. Then we'll go to
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  Tracy Terrence and then in the other Tracy League and then we'll get this party
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  started with some questions and listen, it's a conversation. So I have a
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  few things to get the conversation started, but we can kind of like jump
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  in if it's something I didn't think about. What's gonna really do this thing?
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  You know, right? So Rod Digga, what's what's going on with
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  you? Like the USS is well, I've been I've been doing a lot
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  of touring. I mean, I'm hey, I'm I'm I'm capitalizing off the
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  fifty years of hip hop. You know, they they got bags bags for
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  the old head this year, So I'm getting in wid of getting is good.
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  And I've been I mean, I you know, I've had some I've
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  had some success in acting. I'll also have a program called Lyrics Matter,
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  where I'm men touring and kind of you know, teaching folks about the end
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  of story and you know, all the things that that needs to go into
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  it. It's broken up into four components. I focus on the history with
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  a lot of them, don't you know, give enough time and energy and
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  to actually learning the history of it. Artists development something that U has pretty
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  much been all but gone, so we need to get that back. You
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  know, we were throwing bags at these young artists, but not really psychologically
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  preparing them for what's to come in and you're seeing the fallout. Entrepreneurship.
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  How to you know, how to make a successful career out of what you
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  love doing, how to how to how to turn your hobbies into a profit,
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  and and rap techniques where I'm actually like throwing through exercises with them,
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  showing them, you know, some some couple of tricks I'm sharing about how
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  I you know, how I come up with my with versus. So it's
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  a it's a four part course, and I do it globally. I just
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  recently became a part of the Next Level movement, So now I'm actually a
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  cultural ambassador for the United States government, where you know, we get government
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  funding to go abroad and and and teach hip hop culture and stuff. So
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  I'm a little bit all over the place. I would like to get some
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  music out before this year's over. I think it would be a travesty if
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  I don't at least drop us all during the fiftieth anniversary hip Hop. But
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  to be quite honest, ay they they want to keep paying for Party and
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  Budgeon and the Mariah Regan. I'm all for it, but you know,
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  I feel like I owe it to myself and my you know, my my
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  spitting fans to at least give you know, take one last trip to the
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  rodeo. Yes, and listen. I was ready for today, y'all,
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  because you know, I got my hip hop swag on. I'm popping my
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  collar. I'm fucking fresh and fly you know back we said, fucky fresh
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  and fly back in the day. Okay, I'm I sound crazy. Go
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  ahead, Tracy, your next stop the Fresh right? Yes, exactly,
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  yes, exactly hilarious. So I currently I uh as less said, having
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  a series that I executive produced the next Sally directed, called hip Hop Treasures
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  on A and E U. We're actually we were looking for some of the
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  most iconic hip hop items we featured. We were looking for the Biggie crown.
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  We were with Trash, looking for the machete. We were with Fat
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  Joe looking for artifacts with him and of him and pun and we found the
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  original shovel. We it was just like a whole plathoral of artists. I
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  think we did. We covered over the course of the series eighteen artists looking
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  for various artifacts and found out a lot of interesting people. A lot of
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  people lost their items in storage facilities, so and then a lot of people.
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  I mean, it was interesting because DMC was saying at the time,
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  when you're in it, you didn't think like someday someone would want my sneaker
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  or someone would want my leather jacket. So it was super super fun.
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  Iced Tea and ll Cool j were the host Yo Yo and Cyph of Sounds
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  were the actual individuals that went out for the items, and Pete Knights in
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  Paradise were the original creators of the series, so that was a super super
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  fun. My career has always been in music as well as in the creative
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  storytelling space. I worked with Organized Noise who actually created and founded Outcasts and
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  Goodie Mob, and I actually produced some of the first Sprite Obey Your Thirst
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  commercials with Graham Puba, with Pete Rockasill Smooth with Red Alert and karras one.
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  So I love hip hop and it's just a part of my DNA to
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  also innundate myself with telling stories in that space as well as telling stories like
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  creating the series being Bobby Brown and I just also wrapped production on a four
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  part doc series for a company called House of Nonfiction, which is going to
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  be distributed through Showtime. Actually on women in hip hop, the historical timeline
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  showing the pioneers all the way to the future and the one to sort of
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  blew it up and then the disruptors. So needless to say, I love
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  telling those types of stories and just being a part of making sure that people
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  like really get the truth and understand the culture. Yes, because you know,
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  hip hop is a culture. I know that when I heard my first
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  rap song. That's why I was so glad to be able to book Wonder
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  Mike. I was about thirteen, I'm telling my age when the Sugar Hot
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  Games album first came out, and you know, a hip hop hippie,
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  so it was we called it rap music. But then over the course of
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  time, and we'll tell me more about how it became a culture. It
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  became bigger than just the music. So to your point. I do agree
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  a thousand percent. So yeah, and Wonder Micah the Sugar Wonder Mike and
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  Leland Robinson's family, they're on that as well on the series, and he
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  actually gets to see the first album the that they did, and they literally
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  wrote hand wrote the labels and it was the first time in fifty years that
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  he would actually thorn the wax and seeing his handwriting on that label, I
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  love that. Okay, TLB, that'site my nickname for Tilly's. So yes,
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  the name is Terrence L. Bankston and the Skated General actually was a
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  name that was given or assigned to me. I just sort of say as
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  I when I was at Bloomfield College. Pretty much I can say even before
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  then, in elementary school in high school, I just took hip hop culture
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  everywhere I went, and for us back then, we would see the rod
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  Diggers of the world. Even the radio host popular ones like Wendy Williams will
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  be at Brokers in New Jersey. I can remember hosting when they start allowing
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  us to host rap concerts again, being one of the few independent artists to
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  be able to get access to the parties that Remy Martin's and some of those
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  and Fat Joe's and those type of artists that were coming out of New York
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  but now coming over to New Jersey. Jada Kiss performing at the Rabbitry again
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  broke us was like a primary place that allowed us to have those type of
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  concerts, and it kind of just gave me a natural thing. I mean,
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  I started out like two bock dancing and then making music was obviously an
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  outlet to sort of just communicate but also entertain not just my friends but our
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  peers. And so that just you know, being on the track of just
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  always being involved in the community and understanding that really hip hop was birthed from
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  that, you know, allowing us to be a voice or have a voice
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  when we didn't. And so being of the eighties babies I was born in
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  eighty two, that always stuck with me. And so in twenty thirteen,
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  you know when they said, folks say they don't support Jersey and some of
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  it, and I understand some of that is true, but what does support
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  look like? And when you don't have a seat at the table, you
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  can create your own table, and we were able to do that with folks
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  like our one of our current council people do it all from Lloyd's Underground with
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  Rod Digger and Red red Man and Wycleft, who I was able to do
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  his book stop here at Esis County College, all of those type of things,
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  people who said, who really brought into that model. If you build
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  it, they will come. And so came the Hip Hop Press Conference,
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  and it was about keeping the red carpet there, but bridging the gap between
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  the board, the block and the boardroom, having our icons like some of
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  them have name, but also up and coming folks, the battle wrappers.
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  Even because some we operate in these solos and hip hop and we have few
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  opportunities outside of certain award shows where we all can come together and celebrate each
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  other, and particularly in New Jersey, we really weren't doing that and so
• 15:48
  the Hip Hop Press Conference allowed us to do that. We are pretty i
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  think on our tenth conference planning the eleventh. But it also allowed us to
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  take curriculums. What are what are still used. They're taught by members of
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  our our board and our co founder, but they're also used as a template
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  throughout North both within the school district but also by governmental agencies and also any
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  staunch We have curriculums in Camden as well. And so it's about teaching folks
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  a lot of with our digger just told on, but also putting them in
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  the atmosphere, not just being inspiring to them because of an accolade on accomplishment
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  or a rat bar, but being empowering them with information in the sense the
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  game is to be uh sold and not to be told. And we take
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  a different approach at the Hip Hop Press Conference. We share it with those
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  that are part of the culture and give folks from stylists to writers, to
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  photographers, videographers, definitely the press right the opportunity to come and see who
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  we are and again celebrate us all awesome. Thank you, Hey Eddie,
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  We're gonna get you later. Now we have Tracy Lee. Tracy Lee new
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  to me. So I don't know a lot about people other than you know
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  that you are just like killing you. You've got brain, brains and talent.
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  Some people just have talent, others have brains. It's weird when you
• 17:08
  have both. So going ahead, and mister Esquire slash rappers, slash spit
• 17:14
  artists slash hip hop artists. So tell us a bit more about yourself.
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  I'm just following in the footsteps all of my colleagues. Handle. That's all
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  for everybody that doesn't know. My name is Tracy Lee. Just to give
• 17:26
  you a brief background. I enjoyed my success and around ninety six ninety seven
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  with a hit called the Themes Party Time, and released the album in nineteen
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  ninety seven called Many Faces Uh, featuring the lead great Notorious Big on a
• 17:40
  record call keep your Hands High and also did the theme remixed with UH one
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  under the bust rhymes you know what I'm saying, one of the one of
• 17:48
  the colleagues and uh. So, you know, during that time, you
• 17:52
  know, basically that was my opportunity to learn the business because coming up during
• 17:57
  that time, a lot of artists were just concerned with getting on, getting
• 18:02
  signed, you know, creating an opportunity or putting yourself an opportunity for the
• 18:07
  world to hear you from a from a creative and musical standpoint. But a
• 18:11
  lot of us didn't really know about the business like that. So it was
• 18:14
  kind of like learning on the job. And so what happens is when you
• 18:18
  finally get into the game and finally you know, are able to you know,
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  put put these records out and put these ideas into the world. You
• 18:25
  understand it. That's really only five percent of the game, and it's really
• 18:29
  about the business. You know, you can have the most talent in the
• 18:32
  world, but if you don't have the right team around you, you don't
• 18:34
  have the right knowledge to be able to maneuver through the game. If you're
• 18:37
  if you're playing checkers in that chess, then you can quickly you know from
• 18:41
  that that that short period of success, you can quickly fall off because there
• 18:45
  are other people that these industries and these corporations want to slowing. And it's
• 18:51
  like a factory, you know, put it, you get them in,
• 18:53
  and you put them out. You know what I'm saying, because it's really
• 18:56
  about the dollars. So what happens is you get dropped. And I dropped
• 18:57
  in two thousand and one out on the second album, which was actually completed,
• 19:03
  but it was it was never released. It had the likes of a
• 19:07
  young Kanye doing production on it. It had Corrupt on it, it had
• 19:11
  buff shot on it, It had it. I mean, it was really
• 19:14
  destined from a creative standpoint to be successful. But there were things that were
• 19:18
  happening in the building that weren't in my favorite so we get dropped in two
• 19:22
  thousand and one, and so now we're searching for the next move. You
• 19:25
  know, the sound had changed, you know, just to shift in and
• 19:30
  what people were talking about it changed. So I had to you know,
• 19:33
  figure this thing out, and on my faith. You know, you do
• 19:37
  a lot of praying, you do a lot of asking God, like what
• 19:41
  direction do we go in? And so you know, those five years from
• 19:44
  ninety six, ninety seven to two thousand and one, it was kind of
• 19:48
  like, Okay, I learned some things. I find out some things about
• 19:51
  this game. And what is missing, well it's missing is somebody that conveyed
• 19:55
  these artists what these contracts are supposed to look like? What And this has
• 19:59
  come from a perspective of an artist, not from the perspective of and that's
• 20:04
  working in the hoops with the label of course I'm saying. So you know,
• 20:08
  basically the epiphany was go to law school. So I decided to you
• 20:14
  know, take the l side and all this other sinds of stuff. And
• 20:15
  so we get accepted at Southern University Loss and first of all, I got
• 20:21
  my undergraduate Howard University. We do life absolutely absolutely, h we get accepted,
• 20:30
  We kept at HBCU, we get accepted at Southern University down in Badrous,
• 20:34
  Louisiana. I attend in two thousand and three, get my JD in
• 20:38
  two thousand and six, pass the bar in two thousand and seven, and
• 20:42
  so essentially we've been a license attorney for the last for sixteen years. But
• 20:47
  we continue to make music, and so in process and in the meantime the
• 20:51
  tween time release you know, three albums, and actually we're we just released
• 20:56
  a new album not on streaming platform, straight to my website, Tracy Lee
• 21:00
  music dot com, called Different, And so this is where we are right
• 21:03
  now. Oh nice clears for that. I love everything. We're gonna get
• 21:07
  a little bit into the legal aspects of things like contracts, like publishing and
• 21:11
  all that, because I mean, on the heels of Puffy dropping that whole
• 21:15
  I'm giving, I'm gifting folks, you're publishing. We can talk a bit
• 21:18
  about that and what that means, because we have a lawyer on the premises.
• 21:22
  But of course I'm sure all of you have something to say about that.
• 21:23
  But we'll start with the inception of rap music. And I will say
• 21:27
  this, you know, even though I'm not a rapper, I'm not a
• 21:30
  hip hopper, but I am hip hop for a live as you can see
• 21:33
  my outfit. But I do consider myself a person that is about the culture
• 21:38
  because I think that there's many ways to you know, to share a message,
• 21:44
  message, to tell a story. So I consider myself a social justice
• 21:48
  journalist. So I think that incorporating all of those kinds of elements is really
• 21:52
  a part of hip hop beyond just the music. But before we get into
• 21:56
  the other things, let's talk about the music in general. So I say,
• 22:00
  and we don't have to agree that hip hop started out just rap music.
• 22:03
  And at the time it began, people thought, oh, it's just
• 22:07
  a flash and the pani's gonna be hearing out. So let's discuss this.
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  So my first I'm trade into, like, what is that was with the
• 22:14
  sugar Hill game coming up with rappers delight. Now it's the debate where it
• 22:17
  began. I'm gonna say, Jersey needs to get its flowers for at least
• 22:21
  blazing the trail of getting it from below ground to above ground. So let's
• 22:26
  talk about where it started. I'm gonna say Jersey is in the mix.
• 22:30
  The folks say the Bronx Okay, let's let's do this. Okay, let's
• 22:33
  go. Rod dig already tells you her parents were at Well, I'm I'm
• 22:48
  looking at it like this. I feel like, you know, because I've
• 22:52
  I've heard several conversations with people debating that because rapping was actually taking place,
• 23:03
  you know, simultaneously all over I guess the component of the Djang the party,
• 23:15
  you know, is getting credited to the Cool Hurt. But there,
• 23:19
  you know, there are debates about well, you know, there was rapping
• 23:23
  in the fifties and sixteas and and then over here in La this was happening.
• 23:29
  And then I would say, I definitely would say, uh, none
• 23:33
  of this would be possible without Jersey for a number of reasons. Tell you
• 23:41
  you know, for I mean just the p funk movement alone. You know,
• 23:48
  Jersey is definitely responsible for I guess the commercialized production of it. To
• 23:56
  me and Rominston's sugar, he records, Yeah, yeah, prior to Jersey's
• 24:00
  involvement, Yeah, this was it was you know, fight was in a
• 24:04
  part. So I would you know, I would definitely say, put some
• 24:08
  speck on Jersey and you know, to take it a step further, Like
• 24:14
  I mentioned the p funk, a lot of the the most prominent sounds in
• 24:19
  hip You know, our Parliament sounds like without without Parliament, there would be
• 24:25
  no chronic doctor dre any of that. There wouldn't be any Eric sermon and
• 24:30
  and uh E, P and B. So not only you know, not
• 24:36
  only did we play a crucial, crucial part and the you know, the
• 24:41
  expansion of hip hop, make making sure it transcends past parts and now it's
• 24:47
  on wax getting distributed worldwide, but we're also responsible for a lot of the
• 24:55
  sounds of it. So yeah, this was a speck on Jersey. Thank
• 24:59
  you, And if it's something yeah, I mean I definitely agree. I
• 25:08
  mean, let's not leave out Sandy Campbell who threw the party because we always
• 25:15
  mentioned her and not the sister whose party he was working at, So I
• 25:22
  definitely want to pay her respect. But it's true. I mean, I
• 25:27
  just came off of two massive hip hop projects, so of course I've like
• 25:33
  read all the history that could be read and interviewed probably every person I could
• 25:37
  possibly interview, and definitely like sugar Hill Gang that was you know, Sylvie
• 25:47
  and Robinson. That's when it became recorded, which is how history works.
• 25:52
  It gets recorded, and then we know because a lot of other things could
• 25:56
  have been true at the same time, but they weren't documents it. So
• 26:00
  therefore, as we have a flyer that said that there was a party in
• 26:04
  nineteen seventy three, and then we also have an album for a record on
• 26:11
  Wax which was the Sugarhio Game, and so we know for sure those two
• 26:17
  things are true. And that's how it started from being documented and then become
• 26:23
  and then two fifty years later being a coaching a billion, multi billion dollar
• 26:30
  industry and probably this country's greatest export. And and and you know, I
• 26:37
  like documentation because I am a journalist. So when you start seeing documentation,
• 26:41
  I just it's all my taste books. I feel my arm, my arms
• 26:48
  to stand up documentation. And my mother from the South, she was a
• 26:51
  documentation you know, do you? So before we get to the next two
• 26:56
  people who want to chat about that, don't forget. If you're watching,
• 26:59
  we're taking question in comments. We're gonna get to you, so you can
• 27:02
  be a voider and watch, but we are going to make sure your comments
• 27:06
  or anything you have to say or questions, we'll get in and we're gonna
• 27:08
  dress those two. So it's gonna be all a nice little town hall.
• 27:11
  Who wanted to jump in about the insisment of how we started with just the
• 27:15
  rap situation and then grew into hip hop. So do you want to anybody
• 27:19
  wants to? Anybody else want to talk? I think Jersey took a pride
• 27:23
  in making it about hip hop and not just about rap. But we also
• 27:29
  just played that we can rap really well, make great commercial songs and sell
• 27:33
  a lot of records. And so I think because we didn't have our own
• 27:37
  mainstream radio stations or things like that, those kind of hated on Jersey.
• 27:41
  But those that know the history, particularly both of my generation, we remember
• 27:47
  the outsiders bringing eminem through. We remember Kanye coming over here. It was
• 27:51
  called the the the what is it? Not just the battleground but the training
• 27:56
  ground. I remember when your Scotts would be so excited. I did that
• 28:00
  they were they were going to get signed or had the opportunity to get signed.
• 28:02
  But in order to get signed, they was coming to battle regular guys
• 28:04
  on the corner of North. But we always you know, when our artists
• 28:08
  came out, they just was amazing from the beginning, unapologetically Jersey Jersey culture
• 28:15
  We're gonna have a good time. We're gonna have some crazy, crazy as
• 28:21
  beats. But this is gonna go mainstream too. Fuji's coming out with fifteen
• 28:26
  million records, right, Diggos Pop, the partnership with Bust, the ROMs,
• 28:30
  those things wasn't happening for Jersey, but people wanted for the reason they
• 28:33
  ain't want to compete with us. Really is singing like a lot of the
• 28:37
  regulabels in New York. Now, everybody can get signed anywhere in the country,
• 28:41
  but we only could get signed in New York. If that's the lane
• 28:44
  that you wanted to to travel. But so much time was invested by all
• 28:48
  of these icons from the radio personalities again to Puposis. They didn't just live
• 28:55
  and shop in Jersey. They hung out in Jersey. They they they master
• 28:59
  date craft here, you know, and motivated by a lot of our our
• 29:04
  icons. I mean, we were having icons producing icons back to back,
• 29:08
  you know legends. Did you want to do one? Timing on that one,
• 29:15
  Tracy, I mean all things, but as the long Philly representative on
• 29:22
  you know what I mean, I got I to speaking off the half.
• 29:26
  So with regards to the rap muture, Mike well, Tracy's talking you guys,
• 29:33
  mut Mike. If you're not talking, thanks. As far as rap
• 29:37
  music is concerned, no doubt about it. You know sugar Hill Gang,
• 29:40
  you know, uh, basically the label out of Jersey that you know,
• 29:45
  sugar Hill Records coming out of Jersey in nineteen seventy nine, that commercially put
• 29:48
  it on the map. But you know, if we're talking about hip hop
• 29:52
  culture, you know, that's when you like Rod Lutt, you gotta go
• 29:56
  back to seventy three. You actually gotta go back a little bit further when
• 29:59
  you talk about the other elements. So this is where Philly comes in.
• 30:02
  So the first know, So there are elements to the culture. There's you
• 30:07
  know, hip hop music, rap music. You have graffiti boys, Fagan,
• 30:11
  Djan you know, and knowledge yourself. So when you start talking about
• 30:15
  the graffiti aspect of it, there's a cat by the name of corn Bread
• 30:19
  in the sixties. Now people you know are you know, I like to
• 30:23
  equate you know, actual graffiti, the art of graffiti into the trains and
• 30:27
  the tags in New York. But there was a graffiti artis by the name
• 30:30
  of Cornbread in the sixties who you know, and again is they're a debates.
• 30:36
  They're always debats, so who started where and when nowt But you know,
• 30:40
  corn Bread is one of the cats that they kind of credit as you
• 30:44
  know, the first you know modern graffiti artists tagging on walls and trains and
• 30:48
  things like that, and that was you know, Bread out of Philly.
• 30:51
  But then there's fast forward. You have somebody like by the name of Lady
• 30:55
  B you know who you know, started with regards to getting airplay on the
• 31:02
  radio. You know, she started with the AM station WHA T and Philly
• 31:06
  and then made later moved on to Pop ninety nine where you know, now
• 31:08
  you're starting to hear hip hop music during the daytime most times. You know,
• 31:12
  back in the day it was late at night, it was you know,
• 31:15
  and it was one day week or you know, just on the weekends.
• 31:18
  But she is credited for starting you started hearing rap music, hip hop
• 31:25
  music in the daytime on Sundays from twelve to four and it was for a
• 31:27
  four hour block. It wasn't just for an hour, it wasn't you know
• 31:30
  what I mean. So, you know, Philly has and then you had
• 31:33
  labels like pop Art where a lot of cats they came down from New York,
• 31:37
  especially when you're talking about Roxy and Schantay. They couldn't get deals in
• 31:41
  New York, you know what I'm saying, So they they had to go
• 31:44
  el strings and Philly was one of those stops, you know what I mean.
• 31:48
  So that's you know, you start talking about the inception of the culture
• 31:51
  and and and and what started where and who and how. You know,
• 31:55
  you have to include you know, in addition to the rap music aspect of
• 31:59
  you have to include the other elements poetry. But when we when we interviewed
• 32:05
  Lady B, she did credit mister Magic for her. Yeah, she she
• 32:10
  said in our interview with her recently, she explained that she she broke the
• 32:16
  Philly world like and putting hip hop on, but she was like basically passed
• 32:22
  like her her inspiration was mister Magic. Oh for sure. Absolutely. I
• 32:30
  see a lot of folks putting comments in Grandmaster Neil, and I see I
• 32:34
  see you guys keep putting your comments and they We're gonna if you have any
• 32:37
  questions, let us know. We have our producer Steve and Smith. He's
• 32:40
  gonna try to get everybody in. He's gonna put your name there. We're
• 32:44
  gonna kind of address things. Even if you Nika Comma will say, we'll
• 32:45
  make the true read your name out there and say here's what you have to
• 32:49
  say. We can just even address comments, so don't be shot. Put
• 32:52
  him in there. We will have enough room. I'm seeing you guys now,
• 32:53
  lovely. Now, I wonder if we should be saying, well,
• 32:58
  I don't know though, because the thing is is that in seventy three it
• 33:00
  was a party and it was a DJ so, no one was rapping.
• 33:06
  Yep, right, yep. And Tracy is saying in the sixties there was
• 33:10
  the graffiti, which is another element because it's graffiti, break dancing MC,
• 33:16
  then the DJ SO and I can't remember the fifth element, but there are
• 33:22
  five elements. We learned that on hip hop Jersuism. But I'm wondering,
• 33:27
  Yeah, there is a discrepancy then, as opposed to is it really the
• 33:30
  fifty year anniversary? That's right. So here's my thing, and you brought
• 33:36
  up our DJ mcs. Let's go go five elements. So before I do
• 33:39
  that, let me just say this. Since I'm a journalist, I like
• 33:44
  facts, and I don't like what facts either. I like actual facts.
• 33:46
  So the fact is rapping isn't then it goes back to Africa. They didn't
• 33:52
  call it rapping. We've we've always done call response in the culture from the
• 33:58
  beginning of time. But the for this, for this conversation in the art
• 34:01
  form, then that's what we're having. That's how I see the conversation.
• 34:06
  But that's just my meat. But no, the talking while playing music and
• 34:10
  things is not a new things, but we made it into I guess a
• 34:15
  musical genre. But what was getting I think the talking over rep is where
• 34:22
  we lose. One of the major elements of hip hop is the one that's
• 34:25
  at least spoken about when it comes to us knowledge. So when we have
• 34:30
  this plecthora of of of of mcs people who can talk over mike, the
• 34:36
  wrapping part is a skill, right and give it elements to that and styles
• 34:39
  to that. But when we talk about knowledge, it was about understanding that
• 34:45
  m seeing was just the ability to keep getting what it was, to keep
• 34:50
  the crowd hype right, to get the party. And there was some hits,
• 34:53
  kind of hits we have now where the person is just read alert,
• 34:55
  just talking over the record. Kirk Franklin took a page out of that book.
• 35:00
  So hip hop definitely as influids a lot of genres and approaches to music.
• 35:07
  But I think that particularly in this era, you know, it's okay
• 35:14
  to talk on records and not actually test your skill, regardless of your style
• 35:17
  or your approach to the rap thing. And so I think that is something
• 35:21
  that most people, I think want to see a lot of people maybe want
• 35:24
  to see comeback. But when you talk about the block and the boardroom concept,
• 35:29
  the folks that are proving the songs that speak for us that people hear
• 35:32
  around the world all the time, whether it's streaming on the radio, it's
• 35:37
  white men that's choosing these songs or there's black men that's okay in these songs
• 35:40
  because this is what the white man want us to play. One way or
• 35:44
  another, we're not making still fifty years later, we are not the primary
• 35:47
  decision because we're not the primary stakeholders. And so I think you know,
• 35:52
  understanding all five of the elements, but how they connect to your life and
• 35:55
  how they connect to the history, I think is important. Agree And you
• 36:00
  know, like things like scatting, that's rap. There's all kinds of forms
• 36:05
  of rep Even I did the research when I when I was pitching this concept
• 36:08
  to Steven to be on w BG. Oh, but we'll talk about that
• 36:12
  later. We I did a lot of research about and we'll talk a little
• 36:15
  b about sampling with the jazz angle. There's a huge jazz angle to rap
• 36:21
  music. Law rap music to rip a page out of the book of jazz,
• 36:25
  because there's lots of talking in jazz and scatting in jazz long before rap,
• 36:31
  and then we had the blues before that, and all of these other
• 36:35
  kinds of things. So just kind of like to pay oh mad while we're
• 36:37
  talking. Now, let's get to the the whole debate about you know,
• 36:42
  like DJ versus MCS of the five elements. So let's let me know what
• 36:45
  order, because I'm just kind of like I'm here to learn too. So
• 36:49
  in my in my perception, I thought like at the time, the most
• 36:53
  important thing about rapping was the DJ, and is it and or the m
• 36:59
  C or the d JA was separate of the MC and then the rapper break
• 37:02
  that down for me, who I wants to jump in? Then damn,
• 37:05
  my mic was muted this whole time. I was over here talking to wait
• 37:13
  because you don't want to answer that it was rapping exactly like trying to work
• 37:22
  like, Hell, yeah, I'm like, oh, Matt, I'm more
• 37:25
  mute a Right, So this is what I was gonna say about the fifty
• 37:30
  years, right, I think because because an argument can be made that you
• 37:35
  know, graffiti was happening long ago. I mean, hell, graffiti can
• 37:38
  be traced all the way back the hieroglyphics. We know, rapping goes back
• 37:43
  to Africa. We you know how how long folks been dancing. It's so
• 37:47
  because all of these things can actually you know, uh, an argument can
• 37:52
  be made for these things going on for infinity. Is it safe to say
• 37:58
  that we're gonna credit just being the fiftieth year when all the elements came together.
• 38:06
  I would I would say, seventy three is the year that you know,
• 38:10
  the d the DJ officialized what he was doing. There was a there
• 38:17
  was a need, there was an immediate need for that DJ to get some
• 38:22
  call and response going. So he's then in turn against the rapper. The
• 38:30
  taget has been going on. So now we've got so now we've got our
• 38:35
  backdrop for our DJ and our rapper, and hey, wow, this is
• 38:38
  going on focuses in the crowd dance, and so I would say, I
• 38:44
  would say We're gonna call it fifty years of all of these elements coming together
• 38:49
  and culminating hip pop culture. That's the same. That would be okay,
• 38:58
  Basically when it came to be or when it emerged, it all pretty much
• 39:01
  came together when they all yeah, when they all came together. But we
• 39:05
  knew, yeah, because we knew that, we knew these things were happening
• 39:08
  all over the place. They came to a head in seventy three. Well,
• 39:13
  or I actually stay together in seventy three. They also decorated and refeated
• 39:19
  the cardboard that they danced on. They broke when they was breakdancing. That's
• 39:22
  all right, part of incorporating the R two. And they spray pain clothes.
• 39:27
  James went, the women definitely did that. That's right. So then
• 39:30
  the question because when was the when was the turn coin because it wasn't coined
• 39:36
  in seventy three? No, so smelling yeah they came who who did it?
• 39:45
  Was it melling male? I think it was smelling male? It was
• 39:49
  turned cowboy? Correct me if I'm wrong, which should be hill game.
• 39:53
  When Kash wrote the line they hit the hot the hippy, here we go,
• 39:58
  you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, well actually they they
• 40:05
  said it, but it wasn't coined like he coined it after that. Yeah,
• 40:09
  so they give you put it on wax, put the phrase on wax,
• 40:15
  and they did coin it because we can't have the The thing is that
• 40:17
  I don't think that they were calling it when they were saying the hip hop,
• 40:21
  the hippote hop. They wasn't saying this thing that we're doing is called
• 40:24
  hip hop. They were just saying help like skip Scott whatever. They were
• 40:30
  just saying that. Then Mellie I think it was either it's Mellie Mail or
• 40:35
  Scorpio, one of those two, but that's on the show too. They
• 40:39
  basically I'm like, seriously, I'm gonna go teach hip hop after this.
• 40:45
  Uh Like literally I feel like an encyclopedia because I had to like go through
• 40:51
  this history with all these different people. And the interesting thing is which woman
• 40:57
  was first. That's that argument is out of this world. But basically after
• 41:02
  that, it was when he coined it and said that they were going to
• 41:07
  call it hip hop and that and I think that sort of stepped away even
• 41:12
  though mainstream was continuing to say wrapped. They basically decided that this would be
• 41:19
  a thing a culture that we would call hip hop. And yes, rap
• 41:23
  furs people who rap existed in that culture, but they basically sort of bubbled
• 41:30
  up. What Rod Dig is saying is this emergence of all of these things.
• 41:37
  And let me I want to I want to circle back to make sure
• 41:39
  so I love this. So we don't we're not talking in any particular order.
• 41:42
  We're just kind of making work. I'm seeing people popping in, so
• 41:45
  we're gonna so we're gonna take your comments at some point. We won't wait
• 41:49
  till and we'll pop some things that I have to get a couple of good
• 41:51
  questions out, and then we're just gonna kind of take it to the audience
• 41:53
  and roll like that. So back to the So now we see the origins.
• 41:57
  I love what you said, rod Dig about the origins kind of like,
• 42:00
  was this wonderful like soup or salad, all these ingredients hopped in the
• 42:05
  bowl or hopped in the pot and it was marinating and then boom, we
• 42:07
  have a soup, you know, right without a bowl of soup has elements
• 42:12
  and then we call it the whole thing soup. So I'm gonna look at
• 42:15
  it, look at it as soup. Or a salad. The salad has
• 42:16
  many elements and then you're eating a salad. So I think I think I
• 42:21
  can roll with that one. So let's talk about let's break this down early
• 42:24
  quote quote hip hop meaning rap. So we have the DJ, we have
• 42:29
  the m C, we have the five elements of hip hop. So let's
• 42:31
  I'll let you take the five elements and she just did show tracy, but
• 42:35
  we'll break down the DJ. So I always thought that the DJ was DMC.
• 42:39
  So is the D because before the MC and the DJ was the was
• 42:43
  the attraction, not the rapper. So talk about that, and then you
• 42:47
  might want to talk about like how did it shift from that to that?
• 42:50
  So let's begin with the at least the beginning. So it's the DJ,
• 42:52
  the MC, and then why was the DJ the attraction and not the actual
• 42:58
  rapper? Because because once again I don't know if the like when those when
• 43:06
  Grand masked the Flash and those people were doing parties, they were the stars.
• 43:10
  They were, you know, the headlines a big deal. It wasn't
• 43:15
  like honestly, we have like videos or photos of like even LLL trying to
• 43:20
  meet them because they were, you know, they were rocking the party.
• 43:24
  Think about it. So they were and they were the sex seed. They
• 43:29
  were the and then it started to emerge into people realizing that they could actually
• 43:37
  rhyme on those beats and become a part of the party with those individuals.
• 43:45
  Rogga, you have anything to say about that, because you know, well,
• 43:51
  I loved that. I loved to eat the DJ and the MC,
• 43:52
  and I missed that in hip hop. So I want to know the origins
• 43:55
  of how all that came to be. So that's Tracy's point of view.
• 44:00
  I just so I am like the honorary host of MC Sharrock Day every year
• 44:07
  in the Bronx. It's like the first it's the first Saturday in June of
• 44:12
  every year i've been. This was probably my third of four year doing it,
• 44:17
  and it's always interesting to meet like all all of the pioneers come out
• 44:23
  and it's it's it's so interesting the things that they did or that they started
• 44:30
  or that they created that you don't even think about, but it's like,
• 44:34
  oh wow, like that's still happening. Like I think, I like,
• 44:36
  I met a young lady in and forgive me because I'm an agent artist and
• 44:40
  everybody's name is Keeves me, but she's like, yeah, I'm the first
• 44:45
  person to tell the crowd to say oh, or to say they'll like,
• 44:47
  hell, this was a woman. You know, there's so many people,
• 44:52
  you know, throughout the course of the day, each year, there's always
• 44:57
  someone I was. I was the person that started this. I was the
• 45:00
  you know, we were the first group. And it's funny treaty that you
• 45:06
  mentioned about, you know, argument about who's the first female because I you
• 45:10
  know, I, to my knowledge, Sharrock. Sharrock to me, is
• 45:15
  the first female in a rap in an all male rap group. I mean,
• 45:22
  I know there's you know, there's BGB. I know there are other
• 45:25
  women that that existed at that time, but to my knowledge, she is
• 45:32
  credited with being like the first female and an all male group. And as
• 45:37
  a late I'm seeing her get her flowers. So I mean, I think
• 45:42
  that's a you know, that's that's a beautiful thing. If that is,
• 45:45
  you know, if that is historically accurate, I think we're starting to like
• 45:51
  now peel back the layers, like okay, before Chantey, before there was
• 45:58
  this person and this but I I I'm I guess it's safe to say it
• 46:06
  was the DJ because the you know, the party is the music technically,
• 46:12
  if I you know, even being a rapper myself, if I had to
• 46:15
  beat that point with somebody, I would say it was it was probably the
• 46:21
  the DJ that started it all, of course. And I mean, and
• 46:25
  if you're you know, if you're artistically inclined, when you hear music,
• 46:30
  you something come, whether you're trying to rap or even for the singers.
• 46:35
  It's like harmonies just innately, you know, that's just us as a people,
• 46:38
  like we just born with something. And you hear music. When you
• 46:44
  hear you know, when you hear a vibe and it such is your soul,
• 46:46
  like you get into it, you grab a microphone somebody probably you know,
• 46:52
  the spirits probably just took over somebody one day. They grabbed the mic
• 46:55
  from the DJ, or or maybe the DJ was having technical difficulty than he
• 47:01
  was working that out. He needed somebody to keep the crowd going, and
• 47:05
  somebody just grabbed the mica. I mean, that's just what we do.
• 47:07
  And I could see something, you know, I could see that happen and
• 47:12
  something innocently forming from that. Okay, Nah, And to Rob Digg,
• 47:19
  it's like the music is what back to what she said previously, music is
• 47:23
  we bought the elements together, the elements living on their own door, whatever
• 47:29
  they're doing, but the music culminated everything. So to me, it would
• 47:34
  have to be the DJ. You know what I'm saying. I agree.
• 47:42
  So in the early years of hip hop, we had this phenomenon of you
• 47:46
  know, the DJ and the scratching, and really I missed that in the
• 47:51
  DJ element. You have to be a student of music because we had a
• 47:53
  lot of music. I mean, you know today people slamming you don't even
• 47:58
  know what they're about to play. But you have to learn music because in
• 48:00
  the early stages of rap music before we called it hip hop. You know,
• 48:05
  I'm gonna say, the success of rap music was I'm gonna say mostly
• 48:13
  due to the sampling. Because even Rapper's Delight was a sample. So let's
• 48:19
  talk about the advent of sample before we called the sampling. If you look
• 48:22
  at most rap songs, especially those early seventies, eighties, and even into
• 48:28
  the nineties, everybody sampled. James Brown, all these other people, Bill,
• 48:34
  George Clinton, I mean, everybody. So let's get into this whole
• 48:37
  sampling thing. I don't know if they paid folks, but I think they
• 48:38
  pay them. Now, why do you think that? And I kind of
• 48:43
  liked it and didn't like it. I liked it in the sense that it
• 48:45
  kept our trailblazers alive. Right, James Brown never sued. Somebody said,
• 48:51
  at least I'm now relevant. So I do like that. Even if he
• 48:53
  didn't know it was a James Brown sample. You heard it before. So
• 48:58
  even young folks, as we were hearing these sam was was like, let's
• 49:00
  sound familiar, So let's talk about the sampling thing. I kind of liked
• 49:02
  it and didn't like it because I feel like make y'all fit, you know,
• 49:06
  but I get so what we What were your thoughts on that whole sampling
• 49:08
  thing, because that's very strong in rap, very strong even still today.
• 49:14
  Well, it's the break before sampling. It was the break. I'm saying,
• 49:19
  you found that shot in the record, and you and and the DJ
• 49:22
  caught that spot and you and you brought it back before you even like sampling
• 49:28
  didn't come into playing until people started making money. Now it's called the sample,
• 49:31
  but before that, it was the break. The DJ caught the break,
• 49:35
  caught the sweet spot of the record where it was the groove, and
• 49:38
  kept bringing it back, kept bringing it back on the two turns ta.
• 49:42
  So that is the essence of you know what I'm saying that the thing we
• 49:45
  called hip hop music or the thing we called rap music, it was.
• 49:50
  It was the break. And that's you know, James Brown because of the
• 49:53
  way that he you know, orchestrated. I like to say, his music
• 49:59
  and his and it's drums and being on the one like that was some of
• 50:04
  the funkiest, easiest breaks that you could find. You know what I'm saying,
• 50:07
  so and and and the whole funk element y'all mental parliament earlier. It's
• 50:12
  like the basis of hip hop music was built on funk. It was built
• 50:16
  on the break, It was built on the drum. So you know,
• 50:20
  before we even get into the sample. It wasn't the sample until you could
• 50:24
  start making money off of it. And people didn't think about, you know,
• 50:28
  whether or not you're at the clear point until the poppet. You know
• 50:31
  what I'm saying, Okay, And I think familiarity works. You know,
• 50:36
  you see the same thing where we would freestyle over familiar records, right,
• 50:42
  it's the person can can wrap over a beat that was unfamiliar. But we
• 50:45
  listened different. We get into it different when it's a beat that we already
• 50:50
  know, and so we started what Jack and beats they called it. So
• 50:52
  I think that in a in a sense, the whole sampling piece or the
• 50:59
  or produce just using it as a or DJ's honestly using it as a break
• 51:02
  in the record kind of inspired as most things, what we are, what
• 51:08
  we see happening today. Anybody else want to take that? And if you're
• 51:13
  watching, if you're watching, you put your questions or your comments when you're
• 51:15
  gonna get to you. And about five or ten minutes, I'm gonna kind
• 51:19
  of opened up to this dialogue because you want this to be a town hall
• 51:22
  and a conversation. I'm sorry, Rodigo, Now you're fine. I want
• 51:27
  to say sampling is probably the biggest reason that I even started listening to rap
• 51:32
  music like it. It's what drew me to it because I started recognizing sample,
• 51:38
  you know, I started recognizing samples from the music that my parents was
• 51:43
  playing. So that's what really, that's what made me like, hone in
• 51:46
  and pay attention to what, you know, what is this? And then
• 51:50
  I'm hearing the words, you know, I'm I'm hearing an art form that
• 51:54
  I've never heard before. It's like, oh, we we wrap in and
• 51:59
  you know that's that's what really uh I mean to paying attention because you remember
• 52:05
  and in those days, we didn't have these segregated radio stations. It wasn't
• 52:09
  hip popping R and B over here and Rocks over here and everything was all
• 52:15
  one station. It was like how you were getting you know, you're getting
• 52:20
  Blondie on the same station as Curtis's Blow, on the same station as Arrowsmission.
• 52:25
  It was like all one station. So I would when I when I
• 52:31
  heard the rat like with throughout all of that, like when I would hear
• 52:36
  the samples from my mom parents music, It's what cut through the noise for
• 52:40
  me, Like, okay, my mom used to play exactly right, and
• 52:46
  it was you know, it would be a it would be a break beat
• 52:51
  of some sort. So yeah, the sample, and I think it's probably
• 52:57
  the biggest part of the you know, the explosion of music. Yeah,
• 53:05
  I think it was ahead a nice fact to it. Blondie so and speaking
• 53:12
  of rap, first female to have it to actually record rap on a record,
• 53:22
  Well, that's what that's not true. But we know that rep was
• 53:24
  you know, we had scatters and all that. That's not true, but
• 53:27
  I get what you're saying. Well, hip hop as we or rap as
• 53:31
  we know it, calling from the culture. Yes, we've had Goffel people
• 53:37
  do it, you know, mahellia Ja people have done it a million times.
• 53:39
  What do you want so blind? Im? Sorry, Blondie, you
• 53:43
  ain't getting that one. Well, but then then we can't well, then
• 53:45
  we can't seventy nine. That was seventy nine, right or seven seventy nine?
• 53:52
  Yea seventy nine and she did three folks on SNL with her. So
• 53:55
  fine, I'll be nice because well, I'm saying if we can't, if
• 54:00
  we don't, if we don't count Bronte, then we can't count. And
• 54:04
  we're going back to Ellis. Yes, and then we can say TREGL wasn't
• 54:07
  the first either, and then we gotta discredit the whole thing. We're back
• 54:12
  to the park and listen, we're not just We're not discount on Blondie.
• 54:17
  You know what it is. It's like we while we while we appreciate Blondie's
• 54:22
  contributions, we don't we also don't want this revision and history a hundred years
• 54:29
  from now. That's crediting this thing to a white girl. I think that's
• 54:32
  that's a lot of people's problem with because because people call the people call what's
• 54:37
  his name, the the king of king of King of rock and roll.
• 54:43
  He's not the king of rock and roll, berries of other names. But
• 54:45
  so that's they stole our stuff. So I mean, this is not the
• 54:50
  conversation do your homework. Look that's look that's another another thought for another day,
• 54:55
  but anyway, another day. But you get the point. But anyway,
• 54:59
  so no, I got you. I believe I can my girlfriend live
• 55:01
  a minute. But anyway, so so pricy really quickly and we won't need
• 55:07
  to listen to a lot of time on it, but I want to because
• 55:08
  I know that you just did this film and you learned a lot. So
• 55:10
  talk about the so called five elements of hip hop. There're five elements,
• 55:16
  Yeah, we did. I think we named them the what is it that
• 55:22
  fifth one? Yeah, so graffiti, breakdancing, the MC, the DJ
• 55:28
  and the and the MC is, the REP is the wrapper and then knowledge.
• 55:32
  Oh okay, so you all got that it wasn't always about rapping.
• 55:37
  The poetry was our you know, that whole open spoken words that so it
• 55:44
  wasn't that you had to rep You could speak, but it's how you spoke.
• 55:46
  You know. Mayor Roz Baracca has a he's someone who can deliver poetry
• 55:52
  over music. Well, not everybody can do that, you know what I
• 55:55
  mean? Right now? I love that, I mean, And it was
• 55:59
  in before. In the beginning, it was about like you said, look,
• 56:02
  people had battles and they would like talk to each other and talk crazy
• 56:07
  whatever. But in general and overall, it wasn't until eighty seven or eighty
• 56:14
  eight that the word bitch was actually introduced. So we went, we went
• 56:21
  over ten years before the art form began to change and become this space where
• 56:30
  they were. And that actually we can credit to the West Coast because I
• 56:37
  can't exactly remember now, but it was a West Coast artist that actually introduced
• 56:42
  the word and beginning that's a term of endearment. It started out as a
• 56:47
  term of endearment on the West Coast. And now it's you know that was
• 56:52
  well, I'm of the I'm of the Queen Queen Latteople. Who are you
• 56:55
  calling a bitch? Okay, let's okay you and nine why that's you?
• 57:01
  And oh anyway, okay, I'm love my girl with Queen Latina. But
• 57:05
  anyway, so let's talk about that a little bit. So there were there
• 57:07
  were different iterations of rap music as we built into this whole genre we call,
• 57:13
  you know, hip hop. So so let's go through really quickly,
• 57:15
  like a lightning round of like, you know, the the early rap in
• 57:20
  nineteen seventies. Let's talk about that happy rap nineteen seventies, eighties, nineties
• 57:23
  and into the two thousands. Who wants to take the seventies and talk about
• 57:27
  like, you know, oh my god, the happy rapper card is blowing,
• 57:29
  you know, get oh yeah, oh yeah. So talk about the
• 57:31
  happy rap era and why that was so important and how we got from that
• 57:35
  to the eighties. Anybody can take that they want or not. I'm like,
• 57:43
  I'm getting turcherous and the furious. It's confused sometimes, So I'm about
• 57:50
  I think in the early I think in the early rap years, you had
• 57:53
  like both you had happy rapper, but then you also had those other people
• 57:58
  singing like about nine the yeah you were going you can add yeah. It
• 58:05
  was it was all like, you know, the message, It was the
• 58:08
  message, Curtis, I mean, honestly, and I only heard I heard
• 58:14
  this from Andrew Young that the initial fear of rap was that the fact that
• 58:21
  we were speaking knowledge on raters and that it would almost be like a cattle
• 58:27
  call. Like they were afraid that we would use the music to share information
• 58:34
  and to potentially incite a movement. So they feared the power because basically it
• 58:43
  was a way like you know, think about how people rapping what they're saying,
• 58:46
  and the the the colloquativeism of it, and how and like how we
• 58:52
  understand what they're saying and other people don't understand or know what's being said.
• 59:00
  So there was a big political sort of pushback on it out of fear that
• 59:05
  we would that that would be our sort of like code language, that would
• 59:09
  become a cold language. Hence they probably participated in inciting the negative to it
• 59:17
  and pushing pushing, pushing the negative because the you don't think about that right
• 59:24
  now, exactly, yes, exactly anybody else I think you wanted to jump
• 59:30
  in anybody, I'm just to piggy back off. Since the tracy there,
• 59:37
  I mean, not as we know it pretty much is the came right on
• 59:43
  the heels of the Civil rights era. So a lot of the early and
• 59:49
  active participants in hip hop are our children of you know, the civil rights
• 59:53
  movement, So we kind of grew up with the power to the people,
• 59:58
  I mean, keeping it being. Gil Scott Harron is really the first person
• 1:00:02
  I heard rapping. That's what I was saying when I was on mute,
• 1:00:06
  I was saying, Gil Scott Heron is actually the first time I really heard
• 1:00:08
  rapping, rapping, and just the messages that he was conveying. So once
• 1:00:14
  it, I feel like that that kind of carried on into the party.
• 1:00:21
  So now you've got the party, you're rocking the party, but the message
• 1:00:24
  is still the message, like literally and figuratively, and I feel like,
• 1:00:32
  fast forward fifty years, the powers that be were got afraid. Like at
• 1:00:40
  first it was cute. It was cute to have publican to mean sharing the
• 1:00:45
  stage with beastie boys. It was cute at first, right, oh,
• 1:00:47
  this is the thing. We all gonna make some money. But then they
• 1:00:52
  started noticing that folks were getting smart and waking up and actually cleaning up.
• 1:00:59
  And it's like no, no, no, no, no, pull it
• 1:01:01
  bas pull it back. Let's you know, let's and and a lot of
• 1:01:05
  the pioneers, well we'll talk about this. I've heard uh Kumodi speak in
• 1:01:12
  depth about how he felt like there was a you know, it was purposeful
• 1:01:16
  to uh inject the gangster rap coming from the West coast and and to kind
• 1:01:23
  of derail the messages that was happening from the East coast. But then what
• 1:01:30
  freaked them out is them gangsters then flip this trip on them and then started
• 1:01:36
  saying fuck the police and started rapping about police brutality and the pressure. I
• 1:01:40
  was like, wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, That's that's
• 1:01:43
  not what we planned with them. So then they started getting you know,
• 1:01:47
  they started putting the foots on their necks. So then it just I mean,
• 1:01:52
  and hip hop has always been competitive in nature, Like I kind of
• 1:01:58
  get annoying when people talk about up is being pit against each other. No,
• 1:02:00
  that's how we quelled our beast. That's what you know, That's what
• 1:02:05
  we did. So that's not the problem. But I feel like, now
• 1:02:08
  fast forward to today, there are deliberate and conscious efforts to keep the rappers
• 1:02:20
  fighting. I've heard a little Dirt say that he was, you know,
• 1:02:23
  he was offered money to keep the online beef going with Takashi. I've heard
• 1:02:30
  I've heard numerous rappers you know say this. And now you notice it used
• 1:02:36
  to be prideful to call yourself a rapper, like if everybody couldn't do it,
• 1:02:39
  like to be a rapper, to be an MC was like a real
• 1:02:45
  you know, it was like a real testament to you. So now every
• 1:02:49
  time somebody gets shot in the news, rappers such and such, How was
• 1:02:52
  such and such a rapper? He did a video and the crib put it
• 1:02:57
  up on YouTube, and now he's a quote unquote rapper. I think they
• 1:03:00
  even recently tried to call one of these uh uh a school shooters a wrapper
• 1:03:06
  from some white boy that recorded some video on the gram. It's like,
• 1:03:09
  so now now they're using wrapper to to uh to replace another word, and
• 1:03:20
  yeah, I feel like it didn't as accomplished. Okay, we got we
• 1:03:23
  don't we women with the crowns and queen and who you calling the bitch?
• 1:03:28
  We even went from that to now we're on all fours on the red carpet.
• 1:03:32
  I mean, it's it's the way and also the messaging of it too,
• 1:03:42
  like we popp in Molly's no no no. It's like, look,
• 1:03:47
  words permeate. You know, when we were growing up with like six and
• 1:03:52
  stones and break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Words wire
• 1:03:54
  don't hurt you, but they will shape your mind, and they shape your
• 1:03:59
  shape your thought process. And basically, I think that if we don't figure
• 1:04:04
  out a way to to real this thing in like what kids think is cool
• 1:04:12
  and what's happening in our communities, it's one thing when their guys were initially
• 1:04:17
  rapping about what they were seeing and experiencing. It's a different thing if it's
• 1:04:24
  like this is. And I don't care if a rappers like I'm driving on
• 1:04:28
  Bentley and I'm done. I don't care if they're you know, if they're
• 1:04:30
  if they're flossing, I get it. Guess what we could call that manifestation,
• 1:04:35
  but rapping about freaking? I mean, first of all, I really
• 1:04:41
  don't want to hear about another girl's cool decat. I'm good with that.
• 1:04:45
  But most importantly, I'm like, girl, I'm so good on that.
• 1:04:48
  Tell me say something else, tell me something else, like, let like,
• 1:04:51
  let's talk about how we're gonna get the first female president something. Come
• 1:04:56
  on, you know, we went from an arrow where this thing was feared
• 1:05:00
  because of the If they feared that it could become a code, then why
• 1:05:05
  would you not think that they would not be manipulative and strategize for it to
• 1:05:14
  have negative energy and messaging to destroy. Now we are literally the rapping Dalmatians
• 1:05:21
  ourselves culture. Now it's a whole culture of rapping Dalmatians. And then and
• 1:05:29
  then you send in, you know, then insert Jack Carlo to bring the
• 1:05:35
  real bag insurgery. I mean it's hey, listen another now, hall another
• 1:05:43
  day. I think that that's where the industry coming to transition from, you
• 1:05:47
  know, the seventy days and how we got to be here today, and
• 1:05:49
  what do you feel about that? That? I think that I think I
• 1:05:55
  think one of the significant differences is, you know, before it was even
• 1:06:00
  if you didn't know what you were doing, to just do better, to
• 1:06:02
  do well, to represent your community, your family, Well, was was
• 1:06:05
  the intention? Right? And so now you have so testimonial rap or testimonial
• 1:06:13
  poetry is always great, right. I love good sex bars. It's like
• 1:06:17
  you know, women I know love Virgina Mono laws right, which for some
• 1:06:23
  people could be uncomfortable to city. So hip hop has always been very abrasive,
• 1:06:28
  very bold. I just don't know if it was always bold in action
• 1:06:31
  as it was in our intentions. So when we got the big record deals,
• 1:06:35
  and we got the big record labels. We also got more writers.
• 1:06:40
  And in a culture where it's taboo, rappers are rere that. You can't
• 1:06:44
  have ghost rights, you can't help people write your song. You gotta write
• 1:06:45
  everything. Whereas once you get into the industry, and when you look at
• 1:06:48
  how we transition to the now, when most of these rappers or these artists
• 1:06:54
  or whatever terms we want to use, these talents right our signed. They're
• 1:06:59
  being put into a contract just like anybody else. But a lot of times
• 1:07:01
  what they're saying, whether they're male or female, it's not something they've lived.
• 1:07:06
  It's not something that they may know about. They are reciting, not
• 1:07:11
  writing. So that's a whole another thing. And you can and then and
• 1:07:15
  then, and in our culture it's taboo. So these folks can't. We
• 1:07:19
  gonna criticize Cardi B if she tries, if she speaks and communicates with politicians
• 1:07:26
  the way she can't. You know what I'm saying, that's how she tells.
• 1:07:29
  But when we have tons and tons of male rappers, let's just talk
• 1:07:31
  about them, because women have been pillars and stepping up and taking those hits
• 1:07:35
  on behalf the committee for a long time. Male rappers can't forty years old,
• 1:07:39
  can't formulate full censuses. They can't have conversations like the last poets did
• 1:07:45
  in the late sixties or early seventies with people like President Richard Nixon and come
• 1:07:49
  out of there with with with a deliverable. They're not a Marcus Garvey.
• 1:07:55
  He was doing poetry on on Malcolm X's birthday in the late sixties in New
• 1:08:00
  York. That was hip hop culture. We've gotten so far away from that.
• 1:08:04
  And it has to be dirty, it has to be nasty, it
• 1:08:06
  has to be hateful. And when the white artists get the opportunity to go
• 1:08:12
  into the studio, they get the mass production budgets, they get writers on
• 1:08:16
  top of writers, and they don't have to feel bad about that and again
• 1:08:21
  allowed to make a lot of money off our industry. You know Eminem,
• 1:08:26
  he is the greatest selling rapper of all times. Now, I'm Eminem couldn't
• 1:08:30
  work like anybody else, can rap and write his ass off. But if
• 1:08:33
  you're not giving our greatest rappers who can write their ass off too, and
• 1:08:38
  who has that kind of talent and work after the budgets, the opportunity to
• 1:08:42
  access the same, it's it's it's inequity even in hip hop, and it's
• 1:08:46
  our thing. That's the part that's heartbreaking because it is ours. It does
• 1:08:50
  belong to us, and yet you wouldn't see evidence of that. So weird
• 1:08:54
  it has transitioned to it's lost a lot of the history. And then we
• 1:09:00
  are looking for people to be our savers that can't. We should be helping
• 1:09:05
  our veterans and helping to bridge gaps, we're still looking for them to put
• 1:09:10
  us on. And you know, and and and then when we realized that
• 1:09:14
  we could have put ourselves on a long time, although I wonder what if
• 1:09:16
  more people not every decision he made, but the idea of taking creating a
• 1:09:19
  Rockefeller, the idea of at some point saying, you know what, I'm
• 1:09:23
  gonna break from this and we're gonna try it on our own, and now
• 1:09:28
  go ahead. I'm sorry, I do not want to stop you. You
• 1:09:30
  know, I've been calling Terrence my Obama for since our man. I'm like,
• 1:09:34
  I just I could listen to him talk forever. Please finish your sateens,
• 1:09:39
  but I don't want to forget a point something you said, just struck
• 1:09:43
  a chord. But finish statement. No what what? What? What?
• 1:09:47
  I wanted, I forgot, I forgot what a go ahead and sinish up?
• 1:09:56
  Heah, finish your statement. It'll come back to me. I mean
• 1:09:58
  just again where we're transition to the left and we're not really taking advantage of
• 1:10:01
  opportunities. So like for me, when I'm engaging with artists around here,
• 1:10:05
  I'm showing them how not just to put your music on iTunes if that's what
• 1:10:09
  you want to do, because there's other options. But you gotta have it
• 1:10:12
  BDS. You're excited that it's playing on the radio, but it can't get
• 1:10:14
  picked up. You gotta cultivate a base and have your friends like we used
• 1:10:17
  to do, call in and tell DJ anything and why a lot to keep
• 1:10:19
  playing it. We don't have that type of drive. We don't have people
• 1:10:24
  on the team who's looking to do that. We need lawyers, Tracy.
• 1:10:27
  That's that's also rap. We're the only thing where in our community want us
• 1:10:31
  to be one thing, A lawyer, a rapper, doctor. They don't.
• 1:10:33
  Ryan Seacrest didn't, wasn't born with a silversphone his mouth. But he
• 1:10:36
  wakes up a host, then he goes and do another holes. Then he's
• 1:10:40
  a We can do those things too, But also Ryan Secrets wakes up white,
• 1:10:45
  so let's also be mindful. Yes, but part of the difference is
• 1:10:49
  when we're sitting in those rooms. Now, some of the major artists probably
• 1:10:53
  can do it, but they'll tell you, oh, you can't be your
• 1:10:55
  own stylish. You gotta use our stylish. You can't be your own.
• 1:10:58
  It is your budget, though it is your loan money. You can because
• 1:11:00
  I could style myself, I could also get my own fool artists have in
• 1:11:05
  the power to do those things with the budgets. It was just more so
• 1:11:09
  an allusion to your point least, it was really done to black artists with
• 1:11:13
  intention, and the men, damn, they was just having a balls ripped
• 1:11:15
  from them, you know, and buy white men and then coming to tell
• 1:11:19
  us, remember, we're not cold enough. You know what I'm saying.
• 1:11:23
  I did. I'm sorry, no, no, no, I just I
• 1:11:25
  want to lose I remember, I was gonna say. I would be curious
• 1:11:29
  to see how the since the business of rap has now literally been separated from
• 1:11:36
  the culture of rap of little hip hop culture, hip hop culture and rap
• 1:11:42
  business two totally separate worlds at this point, I would be curious to know
• 1:11:46
  if or what it would look like what the landscape would look like if everyone
• 1:11:51
  in the culture did what the Writer's Guild is doing and what SAG is doing
• 1:11:57
  right now, if everybody just said, you know what we want better,
• 1:12:00
  you know, we want uh, we we need severance, pay for you
• 1:12:06
  know, for artists who unfair their deals. We need yeah, we need
• 1:12:12
  unions for our veterans. Like I would just be if everybody just stop creating
• 1:12:17
  and and uh and and let let them, you know, let the labels
• 1:12:23
  try to figure out how they survive, because I always say, you know,
• 1:12:26
  they need us more than we need them, like that's always been my
• 1:12:30
  stance. And and something you said about them, you know, usurping the
• 1:12:33
  budgets and stuff. I was in that situation and I ended up I stepped
• 1:12:39
  to the you know, I stepped to market and I said, listen,
• 1:12:43
  you're not gonna keep paying stylists five thousand dollars in event to let me too,
• 1:12:49
  to borrow some clothes for me. Then I always show up with a
• 1:12:56
  thousand dollars two thousand dollars outfit just as the backup, because if you know,
• 1:13:00
  anything could happen, I don't like it. It doesn't fit. And
• 1:13:03
  what ended up happening over and over and over again, we end up going
• 1:13:09
  with my outfit. So now I'm out of pocket because i'd avoid I'm performed.
• 1:13:14
  I can't take it back. But this stylist thing got paid thousands on
• 1:13:18
  top of thousands. So when I stepped to the label like listening but has
• 1:13:24
  some money that you're giving a stylist, let me go do my own shopping
• 1:13:28
  police and and that's how, you know, that's how I rocked out my
• 1:13:31
  whole uh rod digger tenure on a lecture. I want Tracilly to jump in
• 1:13:40
  on this because it's it sounds like, because Tracy Lee is not just the
• 1:13:43
  rapper, he's a lawyer. So it sounds like you're talking a bit about
• 1:13:45
  right here in this particular area, a little bit about business and negotiating and
• 1:13:49
  how these how how you are packaging something. So Tracy, if you want
• 1:13:54
  to jump in, if you have anything to add to all of the dialogue
• 1:13:57
  in this particular segment, that'll be it would be very help because they could
• 1:14:00
  be they could be valuable even now. Well now, I mean essentially we
• 1:14:03
  were just talking about how, you know, basically the music and the business
• 1:14:09
  of music shifted the culture and you know, going back to the beginning,
• 1:14:13
  you know, I am of the firm belief that we gave it away.
• 1:14:15
  You know, when we took it from uptown to downtown, we gave it
• 1:14:19
  away for penny a dollar, and so once we gave it, we lose
• 1:14:24
  control, just like we do with anything else black black. Let's let's talk
• 1:14:28
  about black people and a black people around it. We create everything, We
• 1:14:32
  all the creators of everything up because we wound up just handing it to people,
• 1:14:39
  even making money off of it. We just handed to him. And
• 1:14:42
  then what they do is they copyrighted, they patent it, and now we
• 1:14:45
  owe them for the thing that we created. And that's essentially what happened to
• 1:14:48
  the music and the culture, you know what I'm saying. And so now
• 1:14:53
  now that they've created this system for you to get to you to get pennies
• 1:14:57
  on the dollar of what you've already created, you put yourself in fine by
• 1:15:00
  doing it. You know what I'm saying. You put yourself in the bond
• 1:15:02
  by doing a three six to do. Because anything that you create, I
• 1:15:05
  don't care what it is, anything where you show up, whatever merchandise you
• 1:15:10
  had, you have to also give them a cut of it, but you
• 1:15:14
  are the creator of it, and that why you wanted Reggordale get on the
• 1:15:17
  table and dance rap what you say name once again, my name is not
• 1:15:24
  Toby I mean. And also on a social justice side, every I mean
• 1:15:29
  when we talk about like African Bombada or part of the black space gang right,
• 1:15:33
  and or even Dip said Jim Jones, any of those folks right,
• 1:15:36
  the part of transcending and and and and teaching that so that when you become
• 1:15:42
  successful you're not no longer admirable anymore. In hip hop, it's like it's
• 1:15:46
  not just a prerequisite in order to be one of these mainstream arts. You
• 1:15:49
  have to be a game member. You have to be an active game member.
• 1:15:53
  That to me, And so when you are hiring who the kids want
• 1:15:56
  to see and they're talking about anti crime violence all the shoot and and and
• 1:16:00
  then it's then they see it on their social media and so again it's just
• 1:16:04
  to me a thing of we can stop gang banging, just like we can
• 1:16:09
  stop recording. But for some people this is like I guess they do.
• 1:16:15
  They're waving in front of us a dream, right, and a lot of
• 1:16:17
  these young men and women don't have parents that are as engaged or as into
• 1:16:21
  the systems, so they just want their child. This r kelly thing that
• 1:16:25
  these parents, some of them parents were saying, you want your child to
• 1:16:28
  have their dreams so bad, or your child wants this dream so bad that
• 1:16:30
  they're willing to do anything before they even get to learn who they are.
• 1:16:34
  They're eighteen seventeen. I think jay z right think it was like twenty seven,
• 1:16:39
  twenty eight when we knew knew who he was. Even a Nicki Minaju
• 1:16:43
  was one of the biggest stars in the world. She was twenty eight when
• 1:16:45
  she became that big artist. These kids are fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
• 1:16:50
  and they're not coming with the same energy that Foxy Browns and Little Kims were
• 1:16:54
  coming. And it's evidence and where they end up today, you know,
• 1:16:59
  it's thinking of that. You wom to my segments. So we're gonna do
• 1:17:01
  this last piece and we're gonna open up. So if us Stephen, if
• 1:17:04
  you can feel some comments and the names and put it in the chatter however
• 1:17:08
  you want me to see it, I'll start shouting folks out and talking about
• 1:17:11
  who's here. So if you've got something to say, pop that up there.
• 1:17:15
  And then we're gonna find out who's asking questions making coming, and we'll
• 1:17:17
  shout you out and and have the panel talk about what your thoughts are.
• 1:17:21
  So Terence kind of took this last from you guys, who are doing a
• 1:17:25
  great job. By the way, so whenever we start talking about hip hop,
• 1:17:29
  and we can run up men's names, we can run up men's names.
• 1:17:30
  We don't ever use women as examples. So I want to give women
• 1:17:33
  some love and give us the flowers like I did some rapping. So let's
• 1:17:36
  talk about the evolution of women. This is just about women, and then
• 1:17:41
  we're gonna open up to the floor of folks watching. So let's talk about
• 1:17:43
  the evolution of women in hip hop, because I felt like that was an
• 1:17:45
  evolution too, just like we had hip hop with men from the happy rapper
• 1:17:49
  to the gangster rapping all the between and the bumps and the rumps on them
• 1:17:53
  and the credit card slap at the crack of the lady's ass. We didn't
• 1:17:56
  talk, you know whatever, and then the genie pants. But we do
• 1:17:59
  have an evolution of feeding was in hip hop too, So I thought that
• 1:18:00
  my perception was the evolution was in the beginning for women to break in,
• 1:18:04
  they had to look like dudes. You know, they dressed like dudes,
• 1:18:08
  they swag like dudes, and they they walk like dudes. And I'm saying,
• 1:18:11
  jusus in, you know, masculine swag. Then it went from that
• 1:18:14
  too, I'm popping my COUCHI open, I'm little Kim and I'm bending down
• 1:18:16
  and I'm tworking. Now it's all from there to like, you know,
• 1:18:20
  you know you and I why it didn't Now we've got you know, wapp
• 1:18:24
  and the I mean, I just don't know what's happening. So this can
• 1:18:27
  we talk about female rappers in the d from the humble beginnings all way to
• 1:18:30
  fifty years you know however, you feel like you want to share your thoughts
• 1:18:34
  on that evolution, and I'm gonna say, Ron, you can start because
• 1:18:38
  you are a woman in here and you were one of the originators. And
• 1:18:43
  don't be haters because she was one of the originators. To go ahead.
• 1:18:48
  And I feel like I always getting put in the golden era. I'm like,
• 1:18:53
  I know, I was a two thousands girl, right, but now
• 1:18:55
  it's it's cool. I haven't let me say this. Let me say this,
• 1:18:58
  the reason why, the reason and don't take this as a no,
• 1:19:00
  not you. I wasn't saying, you know, but I'm gonna say this.
• 1:19:03
  Why you know, why you you're putting the Golden era because we don't
• 1:19:05
  have consistent female rappers. We had a law. We always have laws,
• 1:19:10
  so we you always have men in every era because for a long time,
• 1:19:13
  we had a period where there were no female rappers, for wild none.
• 1:19:15
  It's a bunch of them now, so we have these laws. So that's
• 1:19:18
  why it's not like ongoing. It seems like I wasn't in the beginning,
• 1:19:23
  but you actually were because we didn't have I totally get you. I mean,
• 1:19:29
  I'm literally I feel like I'm a direct descendant of Queen Latifa, MP
• 1:19:34
  Light and Chante, like those are the three, you know, those are
• 1:19:39
  the holy trinity for me as far as females go. And I carried that
• 1:19:44
  spirit all the way through my career. Like right but right as I was
• 1:19:47
  like getting ready to pop, the prototype had shifted to you know, and
• 1:19:53
  then came with the pussy pop poles and and so so you know, it
• 1:19:58
  kind of put my back against the a little bit, like, oh shit,
• 1:20:00
  well, what's gonna be my selling point? And and that's when I
• 1:20:04
  just made my stebbing point about I write my own rhyms. I write my
• 1:20:08
  own rhyms. Like that just literally became my mantra. And I was like
• 1:20:13
  ninety nine pounds soaking when I have no booze, no booty. So I
• 1:20:17
  wasn't showing any of that stuff off. I just so I just made it
• 1:20:20
  about like writing my own rhymes, and I would say from there, you
• 1:20:27
  know, and like I, like I said earlier, because hip hop and
• 1:20:30
  its inception was literally on the heels of the civil rights woman, I feel
• 1:20:34
  like there there was that black queen pride. And not to say that it
• 1:20:41
  doesn't exist today. One of the things I am happy about today is that
• 1:20:46
  which differs from my era is that you almost had to be a token chicken
• 1:20:50
  to click. In my era to be successful, there were there are a
• 1:20:55
  lot of females. You know, Sonya Blade is one of them. I
• 1:20:58
  feel like there are a lot of female else that wasn't really attached to any
• 1:21:02
  identifiable crew, and I feel like they just didn't go and you know,
• 1:21:08
  reach the heights that I would have liked them to go. For no other
• 1:21:12
  reason but the fact that they didn't have that you know that male crew attachment,
• 1:21:16
  so pass forward to today, you know, so the women are running
• 1:21:21
  circles around the dudes like they don't have to be attached to a crew.
• 1:21:25
  It doesn't have to be a male co sign like you know, as a
• 1:21:29
  woman like you could literally just come out and pop. And that wasn't always
• 1:21:32
  the case. So that is the evolution as far as you know, that
• 1:21:39
  is one of the positive evolutions. Now, the messaging, I feel like
• 1:21:47
  it has always existed. You know, Uncle Luke had stuff going on.
• 1:21:53
  I do feel like there is again, you know, me and me and
• 1:21:57
  my brain. I do feel like there is the contrated effort to make that
• 1:22:01
  the poster children for you know, women in hip hop. And I think
• 1:22:13
  that once upon a time it was you know, it was art imitating life.
• 1:22:18
  You know, this was a way to express what was going on in
• 1:22:23
  these underserved communities. And now it's completely the opposite. Now it's now it's
• 1:22:30
  life imitating arts. So now you'll have these seemingly modest women in real life
• 1:22:38
  feeling like they have to take it off in order to be successful. You
• 1:22:43
  know, you got these artists, these rappers that just want to make music,
• 1:22:45
  but in order to get a record deal, they have to enlist in
• 1:22:49
  a gang, and you know, and in everybody's surprised when they get in
• 1:22:55
  a reco charge and they're like, I know, I'm what's that part of
• 1:22:58
  that. It's like, yeah, this is what's happening. It's like getting
• 1:23:01
  a record deal or you know, signing a recording contract shouldn't be a depth
• 1:23:08
  sentence, so you know, but we want to keep it on women as
• 1:23:12
  But as far as the women, I would just like to see more balance.
• 1:23:17
  I mean, you know, rhapsody is the name that's a goal to
• 1:23:20
  name for everybody. Oh, I don't really about your rhapsody, but there's
• 1:23:25
  you know, it's a hundred rapsodies out there, and just like there's a
• 1:23:30
  hundred sex pistols out there, let's you know, let's take the time to
• 1:23:35
  celebrate them all and and create the balance so that they you know, that
• 1:23:40
  they all get that shine. And and I can't confirm or deny that it's
• 1:23:45
  not purposeful that those girls don't really get that shine. How like, how
• 1:23:50
  is it? You know, how does you know? How does this?
• 1:23:57
  I don't want to call people out specifically because I feel like every artist has
• 1:24:01
  the right to afford themselves the opportunity to change their life. If that's what
• 1:24:06
  you're doing, that's the kind of music you're making. Rock Out. I
• 1:24:11
  put it on the powers that be that elevates this and keeps this, like,
• 1:24:16
  look, there's no reason why Lady London does not have a deal,
• 1:24:21
  does not you know what I mean? So I and I don't think that
• 1:24:25
  is you know, I don't think that is not on purpose. So those
• 1:24:30
  are the things I would like to see change with women. Sorry, the
• 1:24:34
  long well, it feels like it's the same thing that's happening with the guys
• 1:24:40
  with the mail wrappers. It's okay, we're pushing up the ones that are
• 1:24:46
  you know, basically just affecting women talking about drugs and talking about gangs and
• 1:24:54
  all the you know and all that kind of that type of stuff and the
• 1:24:58
  same thing. It's like, the more or you can talk about I mean,
• 1:25:01
  I think like we went from salt and pepper, like this liberation of
• 1:25:06
  let's talk about sex, let's be responsible, let's you know, let's be
• 1:25:11
  honest, and into this era of where we got to the fire. Well,
• 1:25:15
  the women were like, okay, we don't want the men basically using
• 1:25:20
  us as a pawn or you know, the video vixens and things like that,
• 1:25:27
  and exploring us it's our body, we're in control. We get to
• 1:25:30
  talk about it, we get to you know, flip the conversation on you,
• 1:25:36
  and that led us down this path with you know, the with everything
• 1:25:44
  anything goes and basically, who was it I think one of the artists I
• 1:25:50
  can't remember now that said, oh, now we're in our pussy rap era,
• 1:25:55
  and hopefully it's it's an era you know, and don't see people were
• 1:26:00
  able to transition this into other bigger things, our platforms. But it is
• 1:26:08
  true that it is what's being pushed and is what's that, what's rapped,
• 1:26:14
  you know, what's rising to the top. I mean, it's still a
• 1:26:21
  reflection on our community and our we are just anybody else side of the into
• 1:26:29
  the United States. We are some bonnet wearing work machines. And you know,
• 1:26:33
  I'll throw this in here really quickly. It's it's very emblematic, I
• 1:26:36
  guess of really just hip hop culture here, because hip hop culture became,
• 1:26:42
  we said earlier in this conversation, more than the rap itself. It became
• 1:26:45
  the fashion, It became the music, it became the food, it became
• 1:26:48
  the swag, it became the drip, it became all of that and where
• 1:26:51
  we live in how we look and how we talking. So even when it
• 1:26:55
  even when it dipped into other forms of expression, like in television, it's
• 1:27:00
  no different. I listen, I'm from Newtney, Jersey. I'm not shy
• 1:27:04
  about you know. I know that I live in a big city we call
• 1:27:06
  the hood or urban, so I know about you know, gangs and drugs
• 1:27:11
  and all that. I just don't want to see atl the shy power and
• 1:27:15
  and and and BMF. It's the same crap, bang bang bang, shoot
• 1:27:20
  them up, big dukie necklaces and chains. So it's the same thing.
• 1:27:24
  I don't see anything different in the culture. Even when it comes to film
• 1:27:29
  and television, it's all about hip hop. So again, I like THEOD
• 1:27:32
  I like a good crime show, but I like watching Lifetimes sometimes or Hallmark.
• 1:27:39
  Can't we have the diversity and the nuance. So it seems like what's
• 1:27:43
  sold was only that. I don't mind a diversity in those things. I
• 1:27:47
  don't mind you know, w wet ass pussy, you're you're working, and
• 1:27:50
  booty popping and whatever. But all I'm seeing is crotch, crotch, crotch
• 1:27:55
  coochie coochie coochie crotch, crotch, crotch. All I'm seeing in the evolution
• 1:27:59
  of men sliding credit cards with the cracking ladies button calling each other nigga,
• 1:28:02
  nigga, nigga. You know. So I felt like it became a cookie
• 1:28:05
  cutter because that's what worked. So I'm thinking that just like the men transitioned
• 1:28:12
  into we didn't have individuals anymore, like you know, the Sugarhill Gang.
• 1:28:16
  Then you had you know, Heavy D and Will Smith and all that.
• 1:28:19
  They were individuals. They looked different. Then gangs are wrapped pot called they
• 1:28:24
  still look different. The women of evolution. We had this evolution and it
• 1:28:28
  got to the point where it's cookie cutters. So that's might take on it.
• 1:28:30
  I think Tilb you wanted to jump in and I'm Tracy, Tracy Lee.
• 1:28:35
  I mean not you. You hit it on the head. Essentially,
• 1:28:40
  design, it's all about designed too. You know, we talked about it
• 1:28:45
  earlier when you started talking about the messages and of the public enemies of the
• 1:28:47
  world and the care arrests, and you know, when we started teaching and
• 1:28:50
  the Queen Latifa's and the empty lights. You know what I'm saying, female
• 1:28:55
  names, thank you, but go ahead. I was really absolutely kidding on
• 1:29:00
  an error. There was an error when there was a movement like I remember
• 1:29:02
  going to Virginia Beach in nineteen eighty nine and you know, they had you
• 1:29:08
  know, uh, you know, basically shook the beach down because they were
• 1:29:12
  black folk out there having fun. And then next thing you know, you
• 1:29:15
  see tanks coming down the street. The messaging and the music was changing,
• 1:29:19
  and it got us to you know, young folks to be revolutionaries, you
• 1:29:24
  know what I'm saying. So they had to quickly change the messaging. And
• 1:29:27
  once they change the messaging, you know, especially on the mainstream level,
• 1:29:30
  then you wanted to stay consistent with that message. And that messaging has been
• 1:29:34
  going on for the last thirty some our years. And so now you you've
• 1:29:39
  affected a whole generation of kids. And this is the after effect of the
• 1:29:44
  messaging change and changing and them staying on messaging fifty years later. It's more
• 1:29:49
  about design. It's all about the you know what I'm saying, the whole
• 1:29:55
  plot. See, they always thinking twenty thirty years down the line, you
• 1:30:00
  right now, exactly a long game. Yeah, they long game, be
• 1:30:05
  right into it every single time. Yep, that is our problem. This
• 1:30:11
  is an internal problem, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, it's not
• 1:30:14
  an external problem. Internal problem. Yeah, if they can be consistent to
• 1:30:18
  stay on messaging, you know, we start talking about you know, the
• 1:30:21
  whole uh right thinking you you you talked about it earlier with regards what what
• 1:30:26
  would happen? What would it look like if we just said, you know,
• 1:30:29
  fuck that, we all gonna galvanize ourselves and we're just gonna stop everything.
• 1:30:32
  We're gonna stop making music, We're gonna stop paying is we don't have
• 1:30:35
  a union. You know why why don't union? Because all stay all messaging.
• 1:30:43
  You know why? You know why it won't happen because uh stay staying
• 1:30:48
  on cold. Because if you put a mic in somebody faces on a red
• 1:30:51
  carpet, it's not How do you feel about police brutality? I don't get
• 1:30:55
  about be that to the politicians or don't perfect me. We're gonna stop giving
• 1:31:04
  our money to Gucci. How did you feel about the protest? Yeah,
• 1:31:09
  it's like it's like there is this consistency of putting them like, you know,
• 1:31:15
  giving the platform to the loudest wrongest out the bud just like you know,
• 1:31:23
  even just not designed. Yeah, I mean, because we're also missing
• 1:31:29
  it, the kids missing if you think about we're saying the Latifa's seeing like,
• 1:31:32
  let's look at those people. They're still around, they have real careers,
• 1:31:38
  they're actually winning. So news slash the ones who those people were able
• 1:31:45
  to use their voice and were where something where people saw positive that they actually
• 1:31:53
  wanted to be in long term business with. I was at I was in
• 1:31:58
  DC actually it was actually doing the Obama administration, and a young page said
• 1:32:05
  to me, you know a lot of hip hop people and I said yeah,
• 1:32:10
  and she said, why don't they ever come up here? And I
• 1:32:13
  said what do you mean? And she said, country music artists, they
• 1:32:15
  don't like something with the MCC or anything else. They be up here on
• 1:32:20
  this hill girl until the cows come home, because they gonna get it fixed
• 1:32:26
  and changed. She said. The hip hop artists have actually way more power,
• 1:32:30
  and they never hear we run up there to say we want freedom of
• 1:32:33
  speech. We want them to be able to talk about their guns and their
• 1:32:36
  couchies. But we're not going up there to say we want you to do
• 1:32:41
  this. We want the FCC to require this. It used to be certain
• 1:32:45
  times of day that they couldn't even play certain musics and things had to be
• 1:32:49
  bleaked out and all of those types of things. But no one is No
• 1:32:55
  one is mining or caring about what is being done shad or how we are
• 1:33:01
  being perceived in the world. No one cares about that because everyone is caring
• 1:33:06
  about making money. So I love this conversation because I'm hip hop for life
• 1:33:13
  life. I have my hipop shirt, my hip hop dressed on yass,
• 1:33:15
  you know. So I really feel like this is a really good celebration to
• 1:33:17
  talk about, you know, the good, the bad, and youngly because
• 1:33:20
  you know, whenever you're celebrating something, you know how you have those like
• 1:33:23
  Thanksgiving dinners and it's always what he's talking about. Well, let me just
• 1:33:26
  tell you're finishing well. I got a confession. I'm not your real daddy,
• 1:33:30
  but you know I still love you. So this we gotta talk about
• 1:33:32
  the hard sup too? So Kevin, do you have anything? And oh
• 1:33:35
  yeah, okay, good? So uh jelly being somebody I can't think of
• 1:33:43
  everything? Do you think sampling of today is as creative as it was earlier?
• 1:33:48
  On Sampling of the nineties? Songs and so for like SWV and those
• 1:33:53
  kind of things. So who wants to take that? I love as sampling?
• 1:33:57
  So I think for me now I love it even with a little,
• 1:33:59
  you know, craziest representation, but I still think the sampling is good.
• 1:34:01
  I love it. So what do you guys feel about the sapling today versus
• 1:34:03
  before? A good question? I like that one. I love it.
• 1:34:08
  I think every generation feels like the generation before them can they can't tie the
• 1:34:14
  shoes. So it's like we we we we sampled songs that had live instrumentation,
• 1:34:21
  and fast forward to today the kids are sampling sample already sampled songs.
• 1:34:28
  It's you know, it's a it's just it's a generational thing. It's no
• 1:34:31
  generation is ever gonna be as creative or as imaginative as the last generation,
• 1:34:39
  but they are going to innovate or pioneer something else. So it's like,
• 1:34:44
  you know, it's just one of those things. But I love it.
• 1:34:46
  I love all of them. Uh, you know, reaching reaching big to
• 1:34:51
  the dam that's my jam because I know, yeah, you know, that's
• 1:34:56
  the good time. That's fake right good. Yeah. But then it was
• 1:35:01
  so I'm like, what is my jams? I love yeah, I think
• 1:35:04
  it's funny. I haven't you know my son Jacob and he says he think
• 1:35:10
  he We were having this conversation the other day because he said, I think
• 1:35:14
  they're actually saying, like we with samples songs that were really old, like
• 1:35:18
  our parents recognized the sample, and he was like, now in this day,
• 1:35:23
  they're sampling something that's just a few years old. It's like, what
• 1:35:26
  are you doing, Like get creative? Uh, And also having the opportunity
• 1:35:32
  to work with producers like Organized Noise. I do feel like one reason that
• 1:35:38
  we did have sampling and hip hop was because we because those alreadys didn't have
• 1:35:44
  the ability to pay to have a lot of instruments come into play. But
• 1:35:47
  I really appreciated working like those guys. We had literally a record store,
• 1:35:54
  like they they're there, They had like literally a complete record store where we
• 1:35:59
  were just taking records and doing what we call chopping it up, chopping up
• 1:36:03
  the beads. And then we would actually bring in live musicians because they came
• 1:36:11
  in under Curtis Mayfield, So we had a lot of musicians come in to
• 1:36:15
  play because honestly, sometimes if you were trying to sample something from a big
• 1:36:20
  rock group, they could, they might deny your sample. So we also
• 1:36:27
  had to learn to say, Okay, we hear what we wanted to sound
• 1:36:30
  like, but now we have to make something different because we may not be
• 1:36:34
  able to clear that particular song and things like that. So I do think
• 1:36:41
  that the kids today would have no clue how to accomplish that for those people
• 1:36:47
  who are just joining us. The reason why Tracy knows so much about music
• 1:36:50
  is because her humble beginnings was I think in an r and now he's a
• 1:36:56
  producer. So it was very similar to had like you know, nine Lives,
• 1:37:01
  much like Tracy Lee, they've done everything everything Tracy Lee, you has
• 1:37:05
  something to say about it. Yeah, I also think it's what you're exposed
• 1:37:11
  to too, because yeah, I think if you want to generalize it what
• 1:37:15
  you may hear on the radio or what may be popular, then I can
• 1:37:18
  see how you can take the take of well, it's not that creative.
• 1:37:21
  But I happen to be surrounded by some young cats that are students of the
• 1:37:26
  game and know how and have studied the masters, have studied the premiers of
• 1:37:30
  the world, have studied the pet box of the world, and so they've
• 1:37:32
  adopted that form of production as young kids. You know what I'm saying is
• 1:37:36
  so they know how to you know, get busy and top of sample right
• 1:37:41
  and turn it into something else, you know what I mean. So I
• 1:37:44
  think it's really what you're exposed to. Okay, nice, Any other questions
• 1:37:47
  are comments, and they don't have to think. I think the exposure,
• 1:37:51
  you know, it's why while it's more expansive things, you know, because
• 1:37:56
  of the Internet. I think because music is so staggering at it on the
• 1:38:00
  different stations and stuff. I see what you mean by like the you know,
• 1:38:05
  artists not necessarily going to a bon Jovi record for a sample. Whereas
• 1:38:14
  we were listening to all of that, it wasn't just the same ten songs
• 1:38:18
  in rotation every hour on an hour. So maybe our sample and portfolio might
• 1:38:25
  be a bit, you know, a bit more expansive than this generations.
• 1:38:30
  But hey, I'm keep him sampling. Let me tell you something able getting
• 1:38:35
  a hoodie. Just read both two separate occasions. Just uh, they did
• 1:38:40
  something with the with the I Know what you want record, flipmost square record
• 1:38:45
  and baby, let me tell you someng that's spiking. I ask. I'm
• 1:38:49
  like, keep I'm gonna come on. Yeah, let me let me my
• 1:38:57
  specond album. Yeah, no good Blake. The next question to comment Stepan
• 1:39:04
  our producer. Okay, so Carl Madison, hopefully you, hopefully you're still
• 1:39:09
  here with us. What do y'all feel are the most influential and or culture
• 1:39:15
  changing artists and or albums in hip hop? And why? Let me just
• 1:39:20
  take this first? Honey, L L Cool Jay as hard as hell,
• 1:39:26
  rock, the Bells, who you and I? Why you and I?
• 1:39:30
  Why that's a unity? And Eve, people gotta stop sleeze of mine,
• 1:39:34
  even to me, played herself. Ive was killing that shit. Ive got
• 1:39:41
  a little This is my opinion that she never said it. I think Eve
• 1:39:44
  got a little beside herself when she got that little sick coming thought, I'm
• 1:39:46
  just good. She should have did what Queen La Teeth and them did,
• 1:39:48
  stayed rapping and B and T because I thought she had enough a few more
• 1:39:51
  rappids going on. So my faves are, I don't care if that it
• 1:39:56
  ain't gonna be Nas, It's gonna be Queen, It's gonna being Llo Cool,
• 1:40:00
  J, Hap VD and of course So and Pepper's he has so Peppers
• 1:40:06
  and Rod Dica, Oh and Missy Okay, that's enough for me because I'm
• 1:40:11
  I'm just the host. But I'll get let me let me ask you,
• 1:40:15
  Lisa, are those your personal favorite albums or do you feel like those are
• 1:40:19
  the most culturally impactful albums? Oh well, okay, so I would say
• 1:40:27
  favorite albums and cultural impactful. I don't know the names of the albums,
• 1:40:30
  is some a little loose goose, but the album where Queen Lativa you might
• 1:40:32
  know the name where she said you and I t y, that's the album
• 1:40:36
  that's one of the most culturally impactful albums. Plus my feed. Now,
• 1:40:41
  I'm gonna throw this in here, y'all don't want to put people who sing
• 1:40:43
  and hip hop to skip up bigger than rap. I'm gonna say the No
• 1:40:45
  More Drama album from Mary J. Blast and she's hip hop, so I'm
• 1:40:49
  gonna throw that in there, and then all of it. Oh Cool J's
• 1:40:53
  albums are bomb. And I'm gonna say this right now, stop disrespecting Will
• 1:40:57
  Smith. He was a happy rapper. Whatever album was Summer Summer Time,
• 1:41:00
  that album was most impactfully still play it now and heavy D I mean everything
• 1:41:05
  that he does. So I'm gonna say, and then you know, I'm
• 1:41:08
  gonna say, uh something, pepper. Uh. You know, I'm gonna
• 1:41:14
  say the one with the first one that the you know some of them,
• 1:41:16
  those are the most impactful and the ones I like the most mix and we
• 1:41:20
  gotta say, Lauren Hill, I can't has one. I can't. Twenty
• 1:41:27
  five years later we stuck. And it's I think it was culture. It
• 1:41:30
  was culturally changing, you know, Okay, and I would say outcare up,
• 1:41:39
  I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say outcast players, but I'm gonna say
• 1:41:42
  the South has something to say, like basically from that point because before that,
• 1:41:47
  in the South, there was not that sort of lyricism coming out,
• 1:41:51
  you know, and so and I will I want to stand up for my
• 1:41:57
  pizza, you know what I'm saying. And good him too, like those
• 1:42:00
  guys, and they were saying something. They weren't just rapping about bullshit that
• 1:42:05
  they were literally saying something about the world and the space that they were living
• 1:42:12
  in in the South and what that meant to us as people and being a
• 1:42:16
  being children of the civil rights movement. And people don't know this, but
• 1:42:23
  every last one of those kids lived through the child Atlanta child murders. They
• 1:42:30
  were little boys over time. So the question is to be and I think
• 1:42:34
  about dig can answer and wants to answer this question. We just did it.
• 1:42:38
  What do y'all feel are the most influential and or cultural culturally changing artists
• 1:42:45
  and or albums in hip hop? And why? So? I'd said mine,
• 1:42:47
  Tracy said hers? So who else wants to jump in and throw another
• 1:42:49
  artist album whatever that you felt was culturally changing to you, I'll go I
• 1:42:57
  think Nanier is probably one of the biggest impactful artists with college dropout. That
• 1:43:09
  was a good one, mainly and mainly because and not that it was my
• 1:43:13
  favorite album, because my favorite album ever is not Stillmatic. I don't care
• 1:43:16
  how many albums he dropped this year. It's it's it's always atomatic for me.
• 1:43:21
  My thing with Kanye, I felt like up until that point because that
• 1:43:28
  was, you know, that was kind of the flossy era that well,
• 1:43:31
  it was you know, it was boom bat lyricist lounge. Then Puffy kind
• 1:43:36
  of came and turned it into the what we call the shiny suit era and
• 1:43:42
  its it pretty much lived in that space balling and flossing and jay Z.
• 1:43:47
  You know, it was all about that. You know that my fioso stelling
• 1:43:51
  that lifestyle. And then here comes this dude rapping about Jesus and all of
• 1:44:00
  a sun and there were other things outside of face and that that was cool
• 1:44:05
  and hip hop again and I will always love Kanye for it. Then the
• 1:44:10
  full fell the hell off. But okay, I'm moving on. I mean
• 1:44:15
  today, forget about it. But the Kane let me shut the hell up.
• 1:44:21
  Go ahead and see you'll be He'll be want to shine in with the
• 1:44:25
  answer with your answer is this is not any particular order, but based on
• 1:44:32
  the competitiveness I've heard, I'm gonna try to cover some cultural different areas besides
• 1:44:38
  New York. In New Jersey, I'm gonna give Nellie a cultural impactual album.
• 1:44:43
  I don't know if that would be Nellyville or Country Grammar, one of
• 1:44:46
  the other one of the earlier albums. I just didn't get to find a
• 1:44:50
  region. And it's an era that reminds me when every colts or every every
• 1:44:56
  part of the hip hop culture didn't sound the same. There was a West
• 1:45:00
  Coast sound, South sound, Midwest sound. I keep that in. I
• 1:45:08
  would go with the Foujie's the score, Well, I would go with Lauren
• 1:45:12
  Hill, But I mean Lauren Hill obviously had a very successful album, but
• 1:45:16
  the Fogie's had been album like it. I'm gonna go with Outcasts, speaker
• 1:45:27
  Box, that's another town Hall Lisa, We're gonna do I love that.
• 1:45:30
  Yeah, that's a good one. I love I love Years and my favorite,
• 1:45:36
  my favorite mail rapper is Biggie. So I'm gonna go with Life after
• 1:45:40
  Death. I think that. I mean, that's still probably one of the
• 1:45:43
  greatest single hip hop selling workers of all time. You're gonna say this because
• 1:45:46
  it's death, But the way Biggie came on there, you can tell he
• 1:45:49
  was still inspired. It wasn't he wasn't sound like his first second CD.
• 1:45:54
  I would only want to see what could have came after that. He was
• 1:45:57
  twenty two, twenty three years old. That double Dish. You know it's
• 1:46:00
  a classic. Okay, did you just think? Yeah, Okay, I'm
• 1:46:05
  an old ass. So I'm I'm gonna go back to the I'm gonna go
• 1:46:11
  back to the eighties, like I think Paid in Fall, Nobody at Hurs
• 1:46:16
  like rocking. I like, okay, yeah, I mean he changed the
• 1:46:21
  way people ron you know what I'm saying. He changed the whole behavior that
• 1:46:26
  eighties. You know sweet Field, you know what I mean. So paydon
• 1:46:30
  fall is one. It takes a nation of millions, the whole fact by
• 1:46:32
  public you're talking about albums. You know what I'm saying, n W A
• 1:46:43
  shifted culture. You know, whether buil that or different and shift because you
• 1:46:47
  know what I'm saying. I think you mentioned sothern realistic when you start talking
• 1:46:51
  about the whole Southern movement. And I'm gonna give you know I got since
• 1:46:57
  since weird, I'm on a panel with a bunch of Jersey laughady by nature
• 1:47:01
  and trench shift and that's very true. Who like nobody was running like trench
• 1:47:11
  before trench. So trench is French is Eminem's inspiration. Now now imagine and
• 1:47:16
  and and no and trench. He copied Llo. Well, if you're talking
• 1:47:26
  about influential as far as artists, officer, you have to mention Llo,
• 1:47:30
  and you got to mention and then that wait wait wait wait stop stop,
• 1:47:33
  I'm sorry, Emine m say he copied ll. Well, yeah that's what
• 1:47:40
  he said. That he ain't have to say that. We know he didn't.
• 1:47:43
  But Lucky, I know what, you know what, I was always
• 1:47:46
  under the impression that because I've heard him out his own mouth say that Trench
• 1:47:51
  was his inspiration because because no he I'm like, yeah, I mean that's
• 1:47:58
  what he's saying. It his behind the music. I'm just saying, I
• 1:48:00
  mean, that's in his what was the rock? It was just you know,
• 1:48:06
  as far as rap style. But you gotta remember Llo was really the
• 1:48:11
  first rap solo superstar. Like, yeah, that's true. That's different Daddy
• 1:48:17
  my Baby dead. Yeah that's true. That's definitely true. Yeah, crazy
• 1:48:24
  endorsement deals and brand deals people think about not in my nature think about that.
• 1:48:29
  Another in the midst of gangster rapping, everything else happening, here comes
• 1:48:32
  these guys. They're seeing happy hippard like they basically we're like, yeah,
• 1:48:42
  no light record now, just I mean, that's why I was before Jersey,
• 1:48:47
  we can play. We came out swinging with records that nobody. Tracy
• 1:48:53
  had some more stuff to say, Tracy, I'm saying another one culture shifting,
• 1:48:57
  like they changed the landscape of ye. So we have two more questions
• 1:49:04
  and then we're gonna wrap it up. So we have two more questions,
• 1:49:06
  and thanks for stinking on a little longer because this is a fun conversation.
• 1:49:09
  So what's the next question? We're gonna see if we can hear all comment
• 1:49:14
  Il Sam. You know my glasses I have, I'm getting new pair.
• 1:49:15
  I don't have them yet because my insurance didn't pay for it, so I
• 1:49:17
  got a body cash. So ill fam seventy nine says what part of current
• 1:49:23
  hip hop demonstrate demonstrates cultural elements? I guess they'll do. But you know
• 1:49:28
  what, do you think I have nothing to say about that? One who
• 1:49:30
  wants to take that take a shot at that one clarity on that? Does
• 1:49:34
  you mean one element or does he mean all of the elements? Whatever you
• 1:49:39
  want to answer that, I think I'm gonna go with, like, I'm
• 1:49:45
  gonna give an example. I think Megos have been a good example as a
• 1:49:47
  group of of of just making something different, introducing something new, sticking to
• 1:49:54
  the culture. They're like the Beetles, the hip hop beatles, really of
• 1:49:58
  of this past ten years. Maybe I'll say, and they shifted poetry.
• 1:50:02
  It doesn't I agree. I agree Beetles might be a stretch for me and
• 1:50:09
  I'm from Atlanta, but I still fresh. That's I'm like, Okay,
• 1:50:14
  Beetles, listen, believe, but believe five and it's not five greatest rap
• 1:50:25
  groups of all time, no question. Oh amigos, amigos absolutely, I
• 1:50:30
  mean, producing their own sound. Sound. This is not something that was
• 1:50:33
  just put together. It was really their idea and it's and it works for
• 1:50:38
  all of them as individuals, and they was just iconic as a group in
• 1:50:42
  a short period of time. I'm just and take off was rapping, rapping,
• 1:50:45
  I'm sorry, like one, I'm you know, that's the first thing
• 1:50:51
  I hear in a in a song like it don't matter you're twice or however
• 1:50:57
  you're flipping it like I'm. My ear is designed to catch the vowels and
• 1:51:02
  the syllables that you're rhyming together and take off. Okay, he's the one.
• 1:51:08
  He's the one, and he was the producers can make it the sound
• 1:51:13
  there sound you know what I'm can tell and I can tell interesting. Tracy
• 1:51:18
  make a Simmons. I'm thinking they'll take off. Didn't take off like that?
• 1:51:21
  Yeah, I mean I think I think that he was. Yeah,
• 1:51:28
  I respect them a lion gar ruses, so uh definitely gone too soon.
• 1:51:32
  Yeah, yeah, but yeah, I mean yeah, I mean, look,
• 1:51:39
  I think yeah, yeah, maybe I'm getting caught up to and comment
• 1:51:44
  back on the thing I got caught off on him when the screen went out.
• 1:51:46
  Yeah, we also white folks can't tell us how if our women are
• 1:51:50
  sexy or what classification of sexy they are. I wanted to say, digger.
• 1:51:55
  In my college, we had dirty Harriet on the wall, a little
• 1:52:00
  Hill on the wall, box round Laura Hill on the wall. Everybody had
• 1:52:04
  their own swag demeanor on the wall, behind the bed, by the pillow
• 1:52:09
  on the front, look at towards the door. You was definitely up there,
• 1:52:13
  and so you didn't have to be as extreme as a little kim with
• 1:52:15
  any of that have sex a pill and that's example in those two pictures,
• 1:52:18
  that's behind you. So you're left in your art that is black folks,
• 1:52:21
  most black men and women. When you see that, right, yep,
• 1:52:26
  what's the last question? I agree with thousand percying, what's the last question?
• 1:52:30
  Okay, daniel Thomas, Hey, Danielle, I know her. What
• 1:52:34
  impact do you think, oh or do you believe ai great question will have
• 1:52:41
  on the future of hip hop? Really that's because we're talking about it in
• 1:52:45
  relation to you know, actors and images and likeness and all of that.
• 1:52:50
  But I don't I think the only person I heard mentioned anything about that in
• 1:52:54
  any strong way was ice cube what he said, I'm gonna slew yo ask
• 1:52:58
  if you use my voice anywhere. But I don't think that in a proximity
• 1:53:01
  to rap I think you meant like if he's an actor too. So I
• 1:53:03
  don't. But that's an excellent question. Who wants to jump in on that?
• 1:53:06
  That's an excellent question. I would like to know that as well.
• 1:53:10
  Well. I think that how it what, how it affects the future.
• 1:53:15
  It's going to back to what Rob Daker was saying about be having a union.
• 1:53:19
  Like the writers pushed back, zag is pushing back. They are They
• 1:53:26
  basically now have an agreement that says, no, you cannot use my script
• 1:53:30
  to write another script. No, AI cannot write scripts period off the table.
• 1:53:35
  Right. So what I would say back to what I was saying earlier
• 1:53:40
  about and I'm sure the country music artists have already thought about this. Howl
• 1:53:44
  went up figuring out what they're gonna do, how they gonna stop, how
• 1:53:47
  he gonna be happening. So all these affluent non affluent, I mean,
• 1:53:54
  great, quell you went up there talking to Kamala. It's about going control
• 1:53:57
  when you know, damn well, they ain't gonna stop them going on shout
• 1:54:00
  down there South. We'll open carry. But if if the artists don't get
• 1:54:06
  up and get down there and pull one, I have control over voting block,
• 1:54:15
  and you are going to do X, Y and Z where we are
• 1:54:18
  concerned and where this music is concerned and we want to control and stop.
• 1:54:25
  Like the look the college athletes have an NIL that's named image, and like
• 1:54:29
  that. You know that the artists gonna get to down there and get to
• 1:54:34
  talking about NIL and we control it and you cannot use it or we will
• 1:54:41
  be seeing these artists and their music and their images out here, and the
• 1:54:45
  labels and the three six steal or the three Twitter whatever, they'll will control
• 1:54:51
  it, own it and be using it. When you're gone, Biggie to
• 1:54:57
  pop very well, yes, so you gone. They they planning face with
• 1:55:03
  it, super new jay z verse. There's a new uh Hendrick. First.
• 1:55:08
  They they ain't even waiting for you to die. They planning enough faces.
• 1:55:13
  And he said he'll pull you so like and and not and this is
• 1:55:17
  this is actually a legit concern of mine. I'm feeling like, okay,
• 1:55:24
  have we given so much of the cultural way to if we do decide to
• 1:55:30
  band together and say hey, we're striking. If we do that, they're
• 1:55:32
  like, hey, you know what, we don't need you. I'm already
• 1:55:35
  got your voices. You see it? Yea, check the Check the paragraph
• 1:55:40
  in the long form on page three seventy eight, where it says we own
• 1:55:44
  you for perpetuity. It's like, m Well, that that's that's how I
• 1:55:47
  think it's gonna impact. It's gonna because you know, there's nothing that protects
• 1:55:54
  the voice. There's no copyright on the voice, right. But that's what's
• 1:55:58
  gonna happen. That the change is gonna happen. They're gonna figure out a
• 1:56:01
  way to create a copyright where you because I don't see why that's not in
• 1:56:06
  place as it is. If you can copyright notes, if you can copyright
• 1:56:11
  you know, melodies, how come you can't copyright the voice if it's on
• 1:56:15
  a tangible form. You know what I'm saying. They gotta way to copyright
• 1:56:20
  the voice, and then that when it turns shut a lot of that stuff
• 1:56:24
  down. But that's what it does. It's opened up the floodgates for that
• 1:56:27
  to be researched. Well, they're going they are, hopefully we will figure
• 1:56:31
  out a way to copyright the voice. It is not they gonna because when
• 1:56:35
  they figure out how to copyright the voice is gonna be for them. So
• 1:56:39
  if we don't get to being a part of the figuring out how to copyright
• 1:56:43
  the voice and to say we it is our voice and that you cannot because
• 1:56:48
  I own that thing, then we will be in trying. I mean,
• 1:56:53
  think about when people do reality shows or whatever, they sign these stupid uh
• 1:56:58
  you know, release forms, and it says it's says name, voice,
• 1:57:01
  likeness and that is we can use it. And you know, the Kardashians
• 1:57:08
  came along and said, you can't freak and bite, you can't you can't
• 1:57:12
  edit out of context, you can't move it around, because that's what's happened.
• 1:57:17
  Like you know, can you make people say something. You can't make
• 1:57:20
  them say something, but you can change the order of the sentence. Ye.
• 1:57:24
  So and they realized and got legal representation to stop that from happening,
• 1:57:32
  right, And so honestly, we just need we're It's not like we're not
• 1:57:36
  smart, and it's not like we don't know. It's not like Tracy doesn't
• 1:57:39
  know. But now we need to get behind a person like that and We
• 1:57:43
  need the big dogs to show up with Tracy down the air and get in
• 1:57:46
  the FCCS and everybody and say this is what we want and what we want
• 1:57:50
  to happen, and honestly, culturally, that's where we need to be going.
• 1:57:55
  Like we're worried about the wrong stupid thing. Yeah, I want to
• 1:57:58
  go to the sing who drives? Not just se y'all know the belly of
• 1:58:05
  my car smoke twenty seven years old. But I just put that from the
• 1:58:11
  patrol and I keep going, Is she fine? Okay? So Tale,
• 1:58:15
  did you want to say anything about I'm just listening, agreeing and enjoying it.
• 1:58:21
  Yes, me too, So I'll do a lightning round. This is
• 1:58:25
  the last thing. So all of you guys who joined in and ask questions
• 1:58:28
  and listened, if you were just a boyer and you weren't asking questions what
• 1:58:30
  you were enjoying watching, I appreciate it. This is our first hip hop
• 1:58:36
  fiftieth town hall. We can do more town hall so they won't be called
• 1:58:39
  fiftieth anniversary. Oh wait a minute, Oh, how the press is Clyde?
• 1:58:43
  Uh? They deserve so much credit, Clyde and jab all, they
• 1:58:46
  deserve much credit. Yes, thank you. I wanted a lightning round.
• 1:58:49
  So I've always said that we talked about who's the best rapper, the top
• 1:58:55
  twenty five and all these debates, we never ever asked this question. Are
• 1:59:00
  y'all ready for my question? The question is who is the most underestimated rapper
• 1:59:05
  in your opinion? I already said earlier in the Female Realm. Ease,
• 1:59:10
  I'm gonna say, fabulous, fabulous, he's the most underestimated rapper. He
• 1:59:15
  deserves awards. Who I'm like, why the hell fabulous that I don't he's
• 1:59:20
  the most under estimated? So who's your most underestimated rapper? Of all times?
• 1:59:26
  Women? Man, it doesn't matter or group, it doesn't matter,
• 1:59:28
  okay, go. Underestimated means they are not as successful. They're not celebrated
• 1:59:32
  and they should be. Oh they're not celebrated. They're not giving it flowers,
• 1:59:35
  awards, songs or whatever. They're not you know, you know you
• 1:59:40
  gotta work to get awards. Shut up, TLBA, give a damn answer.
• 1:59:45
  No, But I don't know, cobec. It's kind of unfair because
• 1:59:50
  without it's unfair to say that without saying the industry does that. Fabulous can't
• 1:59:55
  put out an album, No, matter how dope it is, if the
• 1:59:57
  label don't let them. Once you sell a million records, it becomes barbershop
• 2:00:00
  talking who's who's not in the labels decide who goes out, who get a
• 2:00:04
  turn down, who doesn't. I would agree that Fabris has been one of
• 2:00:09
  my favorite artists of all time, and I definitely think he's underestimated. But
• 2:00:13
  I also feel like you know, and I don't know all decisions going behind
• 2:00:15
  the scenes. It seems like you know it was political. I mean,
• 2:00:19
  what do you call the label politics? Why that happens? Sometimes if he
• 2:00:25
  comes out and put it out on his own and he's gonna be the wackiest
• 2:00:27
  and he ain't sell this and then this whole narrative comes out that takes away
• 2:00:31
  from all the great that he has contributed. That's my long answer to that.
• 2:00:34
  No, No, I like that. So my my two was even
• 2:00:38
  fables, who else wants to chime in on the rapper or a group or
• 2:00:41
  whatever in the group, someone I would like to see celebrated more, And
• 2:00:45
  and he is celebrated and he does get his flowers. Pharaoh Mitch Paraoltch.
• 2:00:57
  The fact that you don't know who Parao match is just reaffirms most damn okay,
• 2:01:04
  you got so you're familiar with Get the fuck Up? Simon says,
• 2:01:10
  get the fuck up? Oh yeah, yeah, okay, okay. So
• 2:01:17
  he is someone who is constantly putting our music, constantly selling our shows,
• 2:01:24
  constantly torrent like he's, you know, one of my things. Like I'm
• 2:01:29
  you know, I'm following him, like like the little girl following the rock
• 2:01:32
  concert and he's you know, he's my friends nice, but he's somebody.
• 2:01:40
  But I wish everybody knew that he was still and still one of the top
• 2:01:45
  filercies of all times and still you know, someone I would like to see
• 2:01:50
  celebrated more. But I wouldn't say I wouldn't say he's underrated, because he
• 2:01:58
  definitely is doing his number, you know, in his own world. I
• 2:02:01
  just wish the whole world could be the way I'd be it man, Tracy
• 2:02:06
  and Tracy the most underrated and underestimated who we feel like they were. They've
• 2:02:11
  been killing it. It doesn't be the biggest selling that they've been. They've
• 2:02:15
  been looked over for awards and looked over for inclusion in some kind of like
• 2:02:18
  like rock the Bells thing when they did in August like, who is that?
• 2:02:21
  I think that's a good one, Tracy. Yeah, Yeah, I
• 2:02:30
  love her. Yeah, I respect her, and I think she's talented,
• 2:02:33
  and I think so Yeah, I think we've got more to see from her
• 2:02:38
  too. I think absolutely she hadn't even stretched the surface. Yep. Okay,
• 2:02:43
  Tracy Lee, what is your take on it? Well, I'm gonna
• 2:02:45
  go kind of in the same lane is right there. I'm gonna I'm gonna
• 2:02:49
  give you somebody that's been spitting sins the ages and still doing it at a
• 2:02:54
  high level and torn across the world. He's actually got an album that he's
• 2:02:59
  turned into an actual play. It's called The Falling Season. It's about him
• 2:03:03
  being in high school. I'm gonna talk about master Age. I'm right,
• 2:03:14
  man, Crew the Symphony, you got yo tooth crew? Okay, he
• 2:03:27
  that record, he's the first person on the Symphony master As doing it since
• 2:03:32
  the eighties consistently has a catalog out of this world. His is ridiculous.
• 2:03:39
  He goes all over the world, he tours, he stays on the corner.
• 2:03:43
  Like I said, they turn one of his albums into a theatrical you
• 2:03:45
  know production, you know what I mean. He's talking about it from the
• 2:03:48
  first record to the last record his whole high school years. Like that is
• 2:03:53
  so genius, one of the greatest storytellers about time, man. And then
• 2:03:57
  you go to the readings. I went to the reading about it. Do
• 2:04:00
  I wish the reading it's so crazy? Oh man, I wish that that
• 2:04:05
  play is dope. It's it's gonna be it's you know, it's it's gonna
• 2:04:10
  be like like Carmen and Hip Opera kind of like that. But no,
• 2:04:15
  Master a super good one, and he's about to be on my pide next
• 2:04:19
  soon as I hang up with y'alla celebrated Buster adequately enough. He just gotta
• 2:04:30
  he just got his big you know, lifetime thing life tieven was I think
• 2:04:33
  he I think he's going. I'm satisfied with him, So I agree with
• 2:04:43
  I was opening the door to get back to that. Right. Wait,
• 2:04:47
  somebody say, Roger names her flowers highly highly underbated. Now I agree with
• 2:04:53
  that, but I feel like yes or no, because I feel like when
• 2:04:56
  I saw you know Ladies first on Netflix and I saw how much they put
• 2:05:02
  your voice in there and what they did, I felt like, especially with
• 2:05:06
  the fifties of hip hop, you I don't know if you felt like that
• 2:05:10
  was a result. But I felt like, ah, dig is in there.
• 2:05:13
  There were people I expected to be in there, but when you were
• 2:05:15
  in there, it's a positive step forward. There. Why I was talking,
• 2:05:18
  Yeah, no, I was. I was pleasantly surprised to see I
• 2:05:25
  see how much I was featured in it, Like I I can't lie.
• 2:05:29
  I was expecting to see the usual suspects. And I was like, okay,
• 2:05:32
  there's an actual whole segment about me, not just me, not just
• 2:05:38
  me commenting about the usual suspects exactly, thank you. No, Yeah,
• 2:05:44
  so I think we have one more question and then we're gonna leave with what
• 2:05:47
  you're working on next to me and be gone. I think it was is
• 2:05:49
  there one more question or we're out of here? Any it was one more
• 2:05:53
  question? I think that was in the chat or no? Okay, But
• 2:05:56
  yeah, so I was pleasant because, like you, I knew, I
• 2:05:59
  knew the l these usual suspect. So let's leave and tell people what we're
• 2:06:03
  work. Let me see, oh I'll see something in the chat. Oh
• 2:06:05
  no, no other questions. Okay, So that was my bad. Okay,
• 2:06:08
  so let's tell people we're doing what's happening next and we can keep up
• 2:06:11
  with the other everybody. So I'm Lisa Dirting. For those of you who
• 2:06:13
  don't know me, I'm you know, I guess a multi hyphen it.
• 2:06:15
  I'm in front of the camera. I keeps the camera hai, as you
• 2:06:18
  can tell. And I'm a producer and I want to do more dressing some
• 2:06:21
  time of producing. It's just it wears me to hell out. But if
• 2:06:25
  you're not doing anything, this is a great time to watch The Conversations project
• 2:06:30
  on Hullo. Tracy Baker Simmons is the exact a producer and it's about the
• 2:06:35
  conversation, tough conversations. There's six thirty minute episodes. Check that out.
• 2:06:41
  I have more stuff coming, but when that comes out, I'll tell you
• 2:06:43
  about that. But in the meantime check that out for now. But Tracy
• 2:06:45
  and y'all have more things than me. I just have the one thing.
• 2:06:47
  So we'll go in line, you know, Rod Digga, Tracy, Tracy,
• 2:06:54
  and then t You'll you'll finish with yourself, Rod Digga, what's next
• 2:06:57
  for you? What's what can we keep up with you on? Definitely haven't
• 2:07:00
  heard the last of me. Musically, I do. I do a ton
• 2:07:03
  of features. I haven't released right digga music as of late, but I'm
• 2:07:09
  I do versus with practically everybody, Like I'm all for being that person that
• 2:07:15
  that says I was there first, or you know, I looked up with
• 2:07:18
  that person first, or I saw a vision first rather than being chasing their
• 2:07:24
  wave after the effects. So I do a ton of features. There's some
• 2:07:29
  Flipmode stuff growing. This is actually our twenty fifth anniversary together, so there's
• 2:07:35
  some Flipmode stuff in the works and music. Sorry, digamusic dot com.
• 2:07:43
  It is my website, so everything, because I'm I can't even begin to
• 2:07:48
  like spew off all the stuff that's living in my head right now. But
• 2:07:53
  you can keep up with all the latest happenings on my site rad diggamusic dot
• 2:07:59
  com. That's my tour schedule, that's new music, Getting married in November.
• 2:08:05
  Who whoo whoo whoo. Yeah, that's my next big thing gradually.
• 2:08:18
  Thank you. That's amazing. Uh yeah, Like Lisa said, the Conversations
• 2:08:24
  Project, which is on Hulu now streaming live Hip Hop Treasures just wrapped on
• 2:08:33
  any but we'll now be streaming on Hulu, so I think definitely check that
• 2:08:39
  out. We don't have an air date for the Women in hip hop talk.
• 2:08:45
  But I also just recently launched a platform called reality TV Decoded where I'm
• 2:08:52
  building a community of individuals who want to be in the business or want to
• 2:08:56
  create, or want to package, want to sell, but also to have
• 2:09:00
  direct connections with me to really like ask questions, be mentored, and just
• 2:09:07
  sort of learn more about the business. And I'm also doing political activism work
• 2:09:13
  with the Buiding administration through a group called Echo, where we're working to help
• 2:09:22
  message with messaging and just like really understanding where we are in the space and
• 2:09:28
  to hopefully continue to save democracy. Thank you. Okay, Tracy Lee esquire,
• 2:09:37
  how you doing well? Basically, you know right now, aside from
• 2:09:43
  you know, consultation, you know everything, you can go to Tracy Lee
• 2:09:46
  music dot com. But aside from you know, consulting, you know up
• 2:09:48
  and coming artists on the game. Basically, like like my brother said earlier,
• 2:09:54
  giving away the game if you will, because I'm a firm believable I'm
• 2:09:56
  never subscribed to the game that should be sold and not the be told.
• 2:10:00
  So it's beautiful that you said that earlier. So we we consult up becoming
• 2:10:03
  artists and and things like that. With regards to you know, just some
• 2:10:07
  of the basic fundamentals of you know, the recording agreement and things like that.
• 2:10:11
  But in addition to that, we have a new album out. It's
• 2:10:13
  called Different. It's featuring you know, a lot of a lot of dope
• 2:10:18
  independent artists, my man Eric Robinson, uh Sy Smith, Lady Alma,
• 2:10:24
  production by a gang of people, mainly by my brother Oh Jays among amongst
• 2:10:28
  some other producers that we have on the album. But yeah, and it's
• 2:10:33
  not on streaming platforms. It's strictly on the website Tracy Lee music dot com
• 2:10:37
  and you can name your own price. You know, we were That's how
• 2:10:41
  you know this project. It's like basically you come in there and you pay
• 2:10:45
  what you think the music is work, and so you also control of the
• 2:10:50
  project as well. So again that's different on Tracy Lee music dot Com.
• 2:10:54
  Go check it out. I definitely want to take a page. Yeah,
• 2:11:00
  I want to take a page out of that build. Two things. I
• 2:11:01
  am always engaged in entertainment. I like to just call it hip hop culture.
• 2:11:07
  It's not just something that I do, but it's it's who I am,
• 2:11:11
  whether I'm in a soup or a hoodie. And so I do have
• 2:11:15
  music that's out pretty much everywhere. The brand is get scrillog et s,
• 2:11:20
  k R L LA and A pretty much take you to all the music or
• 2:11:24
  sk to general either one. The other thing, which I think is my
• 2:11:31
  day to day work, which I'm extremely passionate about because it impacts our livelihood.
• 2:11:37
  It also allows us to be trailblazers. A lot of us are still
• 2:11:41
  waiting or standing just standing on the shoulders of doctor King and Malcolm X when
• 2:11:45
  we need to leap off the shoulders. And so I'm working in environmental justice
• 2:11:48
  communities which are over burden. I heard that term use earlier. I dig
• 2:11:52
  an underserved communities like north but I'm doing that in Delaware around the country now
• 2:11:58
  and so again still take a hip hop everywhere we go from the White House,
• 2:12:01
  from the block to the boardroom, like I said, And so working
• 2:12:03
  on environmental justice and working with our ports, which is a lot of times
• 2:12:07
  I'm the only black person or definitely black male in the room. And so
• 2:12:13
  finally we're at the table and no longer simply on the menu when it comes
• 2:12:16
  to shipping and port affairs and us having access to those jobs, but more
• 2:12:20
  importantly how they are causing abortions in our community ASTHMA is unpresidented in our community.
• 2:12:26
  And so for the first time in this country, President Buying has released
• 2:12:31
  unpresidented amount of funding four billion dollars just in one area through something called the
• 2:12:37
  IRA Act, and we finally can eliminate pollutions out of our community. But
• 2:12:41
  he's also done something I think is very important for the first time in this
• 2:12:43
  country, He's mandated that forty percent of funding that goes to any community from
• 2:12:50
  any government office, not just the Environmental Office, any federal office, forty
• 2:12:54
  percent must go to black and brown community. So to learn more about that,
• 2:12:58
  you can reach me at ww dot foe dot org. That's uh foe
• 2:13:03
  dot org. Can you say, can you I'm sorry, can you send
• 2:13:09
  me some information or some links to that because I need to argue these points
• 2:13:13
  because I'm having I'm starting to have a lot of uncomfortable conversations with people that
• 2:13:18
  look like me advocating for Trump, and I'm about sick of it. So
• 2:13:24
  can you say, point yes, yes, please you need to have on
• 2:13:31
  politics because you got yes, you have to please send me somebody talking peculiar
• 2:13:39
  situation, very peculiar, a hundred thousand percent like seriously, just like you
• 2:13:45
  said, to have to have these conversations about that and that guy. It's
• 2:13:50
  just it's it's just can't can't it can't even be. It can't even be
• 2:13:54
  Like are you guys? Yeah, Like it's like it's it's it's getting on
• 2:14:00
  real. It's it's really making me rethink my relationships with people. I'm like,
• 2:14:05
  wait, am I crazy? Politics and politics and religion is personal.
• 2:14:09
  A part of the issue is black people have felt us black our black leaders
• 2:14:13
  because the people that are suffering the most and complain about it the most.
• 2:14:16
  White people can never do more harm to us in our community than ourselves.
• 2:14:20
  So what Trump administration didn't really bother your life as much as our local mayors.
• 2:14:26
  Abe, if you don't read Obama's if you don't bread people who can
• 2:14:31
  compete at a national level, at a federal level, you're never going to
• 2:14:35
  have people like us being in position to serve your interests. You picking at
• 2:14:39
  the church, listen, like even like, something as simple is this,
• 2:14:46
  I said this to someone. The reason why I have part part of the
• 2:14:50
  reason why I have my platform is because I said to a young lady.
• 2:14:54
  She was like, yeah, I'm black and I'm the only way black person
• 2:14:58
  at this company. And I was like, oh, what city you And
• 2:15:00
  she was like Brooklyn. I'm like, how's that even possible? And then
• 2:15:03
  I said, and what are we doing? They're building studios all around us,
• 2:15:07
  up and down the coasting Jersey, up and up in Yonkers and then
• 2:15:16
  over on the pier down in Williamsburg and everything else. And we can't decide
• 2:15:20
  we we came out too black people to work together have some companies and get
• 2:15:24
  some of this seederal probably Funday tax credits and everything else. Have we lost
• 2:15:31
  our minds exactly? So with that said, you know how to catch up
• 2:15:35
  with me for everything I'm doing. You can go on on my social media
• 2:15:39
  platforms and I'm Lisa are Dirty on TikTok, Instagram. I have a fan
• 2:15:46
  page on Facebook Lisa Dirt and fan page. I'm on YouTube without the arm
• 2:15:50
  Lisa Dirt getting on YouTube. I'm Lisa Dirty on on LinkedIn. We'll keep
• 2:15:56
  up with me about what I'm doing. But I think this is great.
• 2:15:58
  We'll do an the pian A discussion because you know, can we clip for
• 2:16:01
  Because steven't want to continue this conversation in the group chat, I'm gonna put
• 2:16:07
  you all the group put the phone numbers when we killed the thing. I
• 2:16:09
  love it wet because I think the policys spending really important to you know,
• 2:16:13
  we all, we seem to be you know, interconnected with the same you
• 2:16:18
  know, value systems around the politics. Okay, yes, as they paid
• 2:16:22
  by everybody.